Jocko Podcast - 464: Default Aggressive. Combat Ready Leadership From Estonia. With Estonian Spec Ops Soldier, Remo Ojaste

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

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This is Jocko podcast number 464 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So we do an event at Escalon Front. It's called the FTX field training exercise. And it's a simulated combat event. And what we do is we take a bunch of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, from like the finance world, the energy world, just any type of business.

We also will have usually some long. enforcement will have some military but then it'll be sales people and construction people whatever and we give them some like rudimentally rudimentary tactical training and then we put them into missions like i said simulated combat usually in urban combat so there's houses and buildings that need to be cleared and people that need to be communicated with and hostages that need to be rescued and the missions are chaotic we'll put them out with some task and then we'll we've got role players the role players are you know former seals or former Marines or former army guys and so they'll be really good and they'll get hostile and there's smoke and there's gunfire and there's

screaming and there's yelling and confusion and we'll watch this group and it's the training is not for the tactics of the training it's for leadership it's to see how how people respond in these chaotic situations. And it's what these people get to experience. And what they get to experience is a massive amount of pressure. Their emotions are running high. They get tunnel vision. They get adrenaline overload.

They panic. They yell and scream. And what we get to see and what they get to see is like a comprehensive breakdown of a team. And they get to learn from that. each individual will feel that and everyone's going to struggle just about everyone will go into some kind of brain lock at some point like where they just freeze up some people just go full meltdown at some point and it's hard and there's been some some of the initial runs that we do some of the initial iterations can be so chaotic and the people can perform so poorly

that a few times I've been, I'll catch myself wondering, is this too much? Like, are we doing things that no human can actually handle? And sometimes I'll be thinking that and while I was at one of these events, one of these field training exercises, that's a long front. And I was watching these two gentlemen, these two guys. And they're just unfazed. And there's chaos and there's mayhem and there's people freaking out and yelling and screaming

and not knowing what to do and deer in the headlights, It's a whole nine yards. And these two dudes are just calm, cool, and collected, but also engaged. They're making things happen. They're not just doing their assigned jobs or they're picking up. They're taking security. They're leading little teams. And I'd actually never seen anyone perform like this at one of our FTXs.

And here's these two guys. And I knew something was going on. So I walk over to JP because JP, you know, he's running the whole FTX program. And they have bios on everyone. I was like, hey, JP. What's up with these freaking two guys over here that are like holding security cover and moving making things happen and he's he he smiles and he's like those guys are Estonian special operation soldiers and They deploy to Afghanistan one's an officer the other one's a senior enlisted guy and

They actually follow the principles that we teach and we talked to him about it and looked at these guys. I was like yeah, they sure do And that right there was the beginning of a relationship that we now have with these two men and I looked at these two men and I was like yeah, they sure do and And that right there was the beginning of a relationship that we now have with these two men and their company. Their company is called Combat Ready. And Combat Ready is a company in Estonia. And they represent Eschalon Front. And they partner with Eschalon Front in Europe. They teach the same principles that we teach.

And they help leaders in every realm, in every different type of business lead. win and it's an honor to have one of those men, Remo, oh, yesta. Actually, it's Ramo Oiesta. Here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. Remo, thanks for joining us. Oyesta. I got it right the second time. Yeah, almost.

Oh, let's hear it for real then. Remo Oiesta. So you have to roll the R, huh? Remo or yista. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, some people just say, Remo. I don't really care. style points with the R.

Yeah, sure. All right. Let's talk about Estonia real quick. Give us the basics. The basics on Estonia. It's located on the Baltic Sea. You got, what, Sweden to the west,

Latvia to the south. It's a pretty small population. Yep. 1.3 million. 1.3 million. Finland to the north. Big bear to the east. Yeah.

And a big bear to the east. So you got Russia as well. and you've had to contend with Russia for your whole existence. It's a pretty flat place. Like what's the highest peak? It's like several hundred feet or something like that. Yeah, it's 380 meters. I don't know how much that's a hill.

Yeah, it is a hill. A bunch of lakes and islands. Yep, we have over 2,000 islands. Latvians have zero. So we won. People speak Estonian. That's the language there. you've had a bunch of wars there and you've been occupied and reoccupied multiple times.

You fought the Estonian War of Independence against the Soviets and the Baltic German forces. 18 or sorry, 1918 to 1920. In 1940, there was Soviet occupation. In 1941 to 1944, there was German occupation. Some Germans fought or sorry, some Estonians, many Estonians fought for the Germans. against the Soviets. Of course, there was people that fought against both the Nazis and the Russians.

In 1944, Estonia was absorbed into the Soviet Union, and then spent many years as part of the Soviet Union. And then 1988 to 1991, you aggressively had what's known as the singing revolution. Yep. people sang themselves free. How'd that work? Well, I mean, it was a good setup, I would say,

and then it just was a matter of people starting singing. Like, there was a Baltic chain from one side of Estonia until Lithuania. So many hundred kilometers, people were just holding hands and just showing that we want to be free. And then there was a singing square. And people went and sank.

So I would say it's more of a symbol. when things started to go in the right direction but that was one of the times when we were able to start singing Estonian songs, people went crazy in that sense. We gathered like, I don't know, 100,000 people.

So yeah. And luckily at the time, I mean, the Soviet Union was falling apart so it was kind of really good timing and then showing that the Estonian people wanted to be free and that's very interesting that the songs were suppressed.

These old songs were suppressed and so then they came back and caught the spirit. Now, you were born in the Soviet. Yeah. In the Soviet Union, I guess. 89. In 1989. Yep.

And so what was, what did your parents do? So they pretty much worked. So mother was like, like most of the time, like in Soviet area, everyone had to go to some sort of a skill school. My mother went, I think, learned some gardening, gardening. So they were like from the country. side. My father, I actually have no idea what he learned. But eventually he was a builder. So he did all of that stuff. Initially during the Soviet times, my parents did some illegal stuff as everyone in the

90s. So I remember that we were selling vodka, like illegal vodka, cigarettes, gas. So we were like living next to a Russian airfield. Like there was a military. base there and as you understand like at that time everyone was cropped so i don't know how my mother figured out or my father figured out that hey we could actually get the gas with a good price from the soldiers then i know that they hold it in a like a small like a small building and then they sold gas out of it to people so like everyone was doing it pretty much and we were able to kind of gather a lot of resources. But that was what everyone was doing.

Everyone was stealing. Everyone was trying to get by. So everyone pretty much got after it. And so that was in the 90s? That was after. Yeah, it was in the beginning of 90s, yeah. Okay. So it was like freedom and we were trying to figure out

what to do with all this freedom. Yeah. So because as I remember, so it was more maybe in the middle of the 90s. But yeah, it was wild. I mean, in the beginning when we got independent, like everyone like just tried to figure out, what to do because now you have this freedom and there was a lot of opportunity in that sense

to do a different type of things and people just started doing whatever was in front of them and they just made the thing happen like my mother she also like like i don't know she was a scammer in the best way like she had some like letter friends so you're sending like postcards oh yeah we call that a pen pal yeah yeah exactly So she, for whatever reason, had a pen pals in Germany. I don't know how that ever happened. And then as they didn't have much money, because, like, we did all of that illegal stuff and gave money, but my father, like, gambling. So he went out and, like, destroyed all the fortune, so to say.

So, and then eventually my mother, like, there was, like, whatever, like, there was no money. So there was a lot of like this piece of paper you go there and you get the ratio of milk or whatever. And she figured out that hey, I'm going to collect German marks like German money and she wrote to the pen pell

or pen pal. And like hey I don't have this type of money in my collection and then those pen pales started sending her money. And obviously she didn't collect them. So she just made those into money and that's how we get by during hard time. So yeah, you have to innovate a lot.

And then what about was there any military history in your family that you knew about? Yeah, so not in like I didn't like see anyone. There was like one uncle who went to the military. But my both grandfathers or great-grandfathers actually, they both stayed in the Second World War. One fought on the both sides. We were really proud that they killed Soviet guys. Then we were proud that they killed Nazis.

So nobody really knows what happened. It's just legends about them. But the fact is that they stayed there. And all the grandparents, they lived through the Second World War. They lived through the deportion or departing them, sending to Siberia. So they were like super hard people. Like my grandfather, he eventually like, I think he lived until like 70. and he was like farming or treating animals and like when he was like 70 he got the stroke

during while he was like farming then what he did he just sat down for five minutes and then continued and that was the like attitude of those dudes like just hard people doing hard things living through tough times so so your uncle so he must have been in the soviet army uh yeah there was one one uncle who went to Soviet army he like yeah so how like every man had to during the Soviet time every man had to serve Soviet army either two years in in the army or three years in the navy and usually the people were sent very far away from their home and in a case of my uncle so there was in the in the city where I lived there was like a restaurant my father had a birthday and as there was no possibility to see any Estonian songs because pretty much like you had local people and some of them were on a

common side. So they were like looking. Okay, who is here? Who doesn't like this system? And then they're rats. Yeah. And that's the way that these communist system works is that there's rats that amongst the people. Exactly. And then there was a birthday and obviously they like drinking. So they started drinking and then at some point my uncle started singing Estonian like songs. And And about freedom, about our land, about our sea. And then just one dude didn't like it. And then whoever the rat was, he said, I know where you will go, you will be going to Afghanistan.

And that's where he went. What he specifically did there, I have no idea. Because every time when we had conversation with him, he kind of talked like he was part of every legend. Every legend that there was out there, he was there. He was the one who survived. Everyone else in the platoon was like cut. Their throats were cut.

He was the one who survived. Then there was sniper shooting. He survived again. Like he had all of those stories. And once there was like a really funny thing. We went to my countryside with one of my friends who wasn't in the military. And we were doing some stuff over there. And then they went to the barn.

And obviously he liked vodka. So they started drinking there. And I was just doing something. else and eventually I went back what the hell are they doing I went there I said like they were crying I was like okay what's going on and then I started listening are friends like one of yours yeah one of my friends are now crying but they were talking to your uncle yeah exactly like and they was the crying I was like what are you guys trying about it's like what the fuck and they're like yeah I was in the situation where everyone was killed I was survived then I saw dead babies and like

There was like this tremendous stories, which you can see it's total bullshit, but this guy didn't understand. So he believed it. So he was a great story teller, and he was like just talking all the legends and this guy was crying. I was like, okay, let him enjoy it. And next day I told him, hey, all of what you heard is bullshit. So yeah, that was the connection with the military. Yeah, that is kind of crazy. And then you think about, I mean, it's a little fast forward, but your uncle, at least in some aspect,

fought against the jihadists over in Afghanistan, who were at the time supported by America. Absolutely, yeah. And then fast forward however many years, you were over there fighting against the jihadists who were no longer supported by America. As a matter of fact, you were fighting with the Americans. So we have a couple of guys who actually fought on the Soviet time,

and then they were still in Eastern Army, and then now they fought on the NATO side. so we have those two as well and those are like really tough guys like the like everyone went to the army

and it was hard like because there was like a lot of beating up there's a lot of figuring out how to survive so all of the people who went through it they either broke or break or they came out pretty tough so yeah

yeah the Russian army is for lack of better words just straight like tyrannical abuse of the soldiers. That's like a prison. That's what they do. Yeah. As you're growing up,

I know you were telling me that you had like grandparents in the countryside and grandparents in the city. So you've got a little bit of both worlds. Yeah. So yeah, I had like an awesome childhood in that way that like on the countryside

there was like nine children. So like if you go there, like there's no rules because those grandparents they utilized decentralized command as we say like everyone has to get by by themselves so it went there there's no rules you can do whatever you can go out hiking you can go wherever you go do other stupid things now when you go to city you had to be at home by 8 like morning you had to wake up at certain time so there's like

two opposite words one was like super disciplined otherwise like total freedom so i saw the dichotomy there a lot and but it was both good sides like my grandfather who was on the city side like he was the he was the man like he was really someone to look up to because he when he was deported to Siberia then obviously like he took ownership of everything he didn't blame like he went there oh it sucks so what do we do now we started building life here so they started building houses where they could live and eventually he started doing sports and then there was like this story

where like at least based on what his friends were saying during on his funeral that like we were walking in Siberia and then we are just hearing someone cursing in Estonian in a garage somewhere like what the hell is that someone is cursing in Estonian here

and then they went there and there was one dude who was fixing his bike and just going at it with the with curses and then said what are you doing here i'm just fixing my bike here i want to like i i'm going to the competition so like okay we we have actual club here maybe you can join and said yeah okay let's let's do it together your estonians no problem and eventually what happens that he became the far east siberian champion in uh in bike riding like uh he had full like box full of gold medals Then when he returned to Estonia after there was a possibility to go back home at some point,

like when you did your time. And then he became skiing champion of Estonia. Then someone gave him a gun and then he was skiing and shooting. He became a champion of that. So whatever he did, he became a champion. And then eventually when he retired, he worked 40 years in the factory, driving a forklift. And that's kind of like that bizarre world worked. People did the amazing things and then they came in

and just did one thing. That's the standard kind of a holdover from the Soviet Union where that's your job, that's your life, this is what you're doing. Yeah, absolutely.

And they were like, they had a lot of money, but there's nothing to do with money. Like, there's nothing you can buy. There's nothing to buy, but you have a lot of roubles. Like awesome what do we do with that? Nothing and then for you grown so where were you living when you're actually like the rest of the year?

It's not summertime. You're just going to school. You're with your parents. What was that? Yeah. Where was that? Yeah, so I was living in the age of the city and like we had a studio apartment one room one kitchen like everyone was living in one room. So I only I didn't have any brother's sister. So we made it happen in that sense. But that was a tight. any place because government was giving apartments to people and that's what we got I guess and then so yeah from there on like my parents kind of put me or my mother wanted me to learn English so he she put me to a school where it supposedly was harder like I have always said that I'm not special at all but apparently there was some tests and for every reason I passed some of them And then I got into the class where like the language was the main thing.

We had to learn English in the second grade, in the fourth grade, German, I don't know, Russian in the sixth. And in the like like high school, you get to get France or French. I knew any, none of those languages. The only one that stuck is English. Yeah, only. What about Russian? Like I understand some of it. But if you don't practice it, you like lose it.

But yeah, you can, I can handle it. but I couldn't have like real conversation. Like we couldn't do this, not at all. What about sports? So yeah, I liked sports. So my father, like my grandfather was a sportsman. My father was a sportsman. Like obviously he was also doing some sports

and he was pretty successful on a like a CD level. But I guess he found drinking at some point and crime. So that was his way out from the sports. but he put me to play basketball soccer so I started always like with a team sports and I really enjoyed it because I know for whatever reason I always loved when there was a lot of people

and we can compete with each other and when we do something together we win so but the the problem with that was always that every summer I was sent to the countryside so there was no access to anything so I kind of like missed every year, three months from the training. I still kind of did okay, but still there was no consistency of that.

So I liked the sports. I did some, what's the called, like running, running, not marathons, but 100 meters, 60 meters. Yeah, all of those things. We had to compete. So I was like doing that. I was always in the top five or whatever. so yeah that was what I did with sports eventually became like a Estonian champion in basketball in basketball yeah dang okay we're like 13 14 I mean like not no big deal then in soccer we

became fourth or something like that so every team where I like I was able to be I was somewhere in the middle a gray mass and and what about like educationally in school is there is there you know in the in the 80s and 90s in America it was like everyone was pushing go to college go to college I guess they maybe still are pushing like everyone has to go to college they shouldn't be but at the time when I was growing up it was like everyone needs to go to college everyone needs to go to college was there that push for you guys yeah it was always a push from my parents because they didn't go to university so the mainly was like that's the only way to get I don't know smart I guess or whatever even though that they were like getting after it on a entrepreneur level in doing crime and other stuff so that was the success but I mean yeah it was always like that like so did they just maintain like a low low level crime where they avoided oh there was different interaction with the mob yeah there must have mob yeah you have organized crime there so my father definitely had something to do with them because at some point my father went and worked in Russia so they were like bringing over, I don't know, stuff that we don't have here. They were selling those things. I know there was something about drugs, but those are like drunken stories. So I haven't confirmed.

They were like, like they were doing all the things, whatever the things would be. But somehow they gave you the impression that that's not the best path to be on. No, not really. Oh, they didn't give you that impression. No, no, no. You was just like, hey, this is a good way to make money. That was just regular part of life. Just that was normal.

Like everyone was doing it. So the next door neighbors, they were also doing their scam and their deals. and so that was just how we heaven was living at the time exactly that was the that was the word that was like our entrepreneur yeah that was it was it was so so when you're going to school are you trying hard you're trying to get into college that whole thing no no no no so i mean until like ninth grade like i was doing good because of my father did like to drink and like to party then was some mess at home all the time then I kind of like felt like okay I'm not doing drinking at all or whatever so my first drink was in the ninth grade and when I tasted that nectar I never went back so wait a second you had

decided after watching your dad drink too much you're like I'm not drinking yeah until you were 14 and then you're like oh I'm in oh yeah absolutely felt like my first first time is well like I was straight went to vodka and people had to like drag me to the toilet that was the first experience but I mean we were like yeah and then everything kind of started I started to learn what it feels like or whatever and then it became cool but my parents never figured it out because I always kept it I was like always sneaky in some way oh they they never figured out that you were drinking yeah absolutely like I think my mother figured out it when I was like 19 and like you're drinking like yeah for 10 years so yeah so yeah so

And that's kind of started to introduce me to that. And then eventually, like, yeah, I kind of ended up in places where I hanged around with older dudes. So they were cool. They were drinking. And yeah, that's what I learned. I learned from their example. And are you still going to school? But now you're hanging out and drinking and just kind of being a juvenile delinquent is what we would call that in America.

Yeah, so yeah, I was drinking and then like, I still get to the high school. So gymnasium, it's not like a school where you can get a like profession because there's like two ways. Like you can get the profession. I don't know. You learn to chef or you're kind of prepared to go to university. So I got to be go to the school where it was like preparing to go to university. So zero skills teach. And during that time, I kind of.

of we were so bored that we started playing cards and we had this one game where as a like at the countryside what did what did people do at the soviet time they just play cards and then I kind of had a knack to it or I don't know for whatever reason again it kind of worked out for me and then we started playing like okay who gets the most winning in this in this game gets a box of beer. So we played one like quarter and I got like 80 wins. Second place had like 36.

Like okay. Okay, I have the beer. What game were you playing? It's good. It's not poetic night. Okay, that's cool. We'll go with the Estonian word. Yeah, exactly.

I have no idea what it's in English. I don't know if that, most likely there is a like, I may maybe spades or something like that. I don't know. But it's a skill game. Like you can read cards. You can have a strategy. So if you play with a person who understands the rules, you can beat them.

Like there is a certain amount of understanding like how to beat the other person. But it's a, it's not like a lucky game. But eventually like next quarter, we figured, okay, let's do it again. But everyone understands what the results will be. So it became boring. So then I thought, okay, what could be the new game? and then I went home and figured out, hey, it should be poker. And then I brought in papers with poker rules,

and then we started playing poker in like 10th grade at school, which is like legit, right? And then we had this like coins, which everyone brought, and then we started playing it everywhere. Then eventually we bought a chip case. Then we kind of started putting in, okay, you put it. 25 croons you can put like it's like 10 bucks

and winner takes all and then I figured that hey what if I cheated then I went into at that time like as you can remember like the internet was like really slow so but there was a lot of access to like illegal stuff again

like yeah stuff that is not available so they were like access to that and you downloaded a video of how to cheat in poker. It took like a week to download maybe, I don't know, 10 megabytes or something. But eventually when I got it, then I started looking at it and I started playing around it.

I really, for whatever reason, liked it. So I became pretty good at sleight of hand. And then I went to those poker nights and they, guess what, I saw the winning. And nobody understood why I was winning. But yeah, I was cheating. That was the reason. But then eventually, like, we ended up with those dudes to, we went to a bar.

And then we saw that there was some other dudes playing cards. And they were already like university, I was like 16, 17. And then there was other dudes who had done it. Like, they were like 21 plus. And they started playing. And obviously I thought, okay, I will jump into that table. And then we started playing. And then for the next four months, every day I went to play pool.

Or at least that was I told to my parents. And in reality, I was playing poker in the back room with some of the adults, continued doing cheating. I was successful in it, nobody understood it. But then I realized also that it's a skill game and you can make money. And eventually like one thing led to another. I eventually like cashed out like I don't know in the next two years while I was in high school about 50,000 euros. And at that time it was worth like an apartment. So yeah, I made more money than my parents and everything like that just because I like card game

And eventually like as my father had that gambling issue I never wanted to raise that that hey I'm making money with poker because I thought that they will never believe me But eventually I kind of like I never asked any pocket money And like okay so most likely they were starting that I'm like selling drugs or something I'm doing the business that they did so eventually like I showed them the evidence that hey it's monthly coming in in like right way so there is no like and all the other guys are playing they are university like educated so they're smart make sense go on and then I just pretty much moved out and but yeah that's

that was pretty much what I did in the high school I just eventually because I started making so much money. I went to school on Tuesday and I pretty much started my weekend on Thursday. And as the weekend went so long on Sunday, I never get to school on Monday. So that was pretty much my school. I really didn't go there, but I still passed all of my grades. It didn't take much to me to get like B's or C's. So then what came after that? Did you end up going to college? Yeah, because I was, I was forced. Like my mother said, hey, you have to have an education. So I said, okay, so what do you want me to learn? Like, she's like, okay, let's go and learn economics or business finance leadership or something like that. Like, yeah, finance management. So I get in there. And obviously

what I did, I just played poker. More poker. And then I was like sitting around, like I had one like a school sister from the school. She was my neighbor and there was a bunch of other girls around me who were studying hard, everything. And I was like playing poker, getting my season Bs without much of effort and they were like mad all the time because they get the same grades what I got. But I just ran through it and what kind of ended it to me was that I forgot to sign a paper which kind of gives me. you an extension that you don't you can like postpone your conscript service or mandatory military service after you've done your studies so by that time initially as a young guy i really like actually

before i entered the poker like actually liked military stuff for whatever reason now as i got so much money i was like fuck that military stuff i don't need it anymore and but then it was like okay i had no choice so i decided okay i will go and try it after the first year because otherwise it will be harder to finish it after I do a break after the second year. So as I forgot to sign the paper, I just had to go. And everyone's going. It's mandatory for everybody. Yeah, absolutely.

So they must have it down to a pretty good system of bringing. How long is, how long is like the boot camp indoctrination and all that? So you can have two choices. Like if you, if you end up in a leadership position, like a squad leader or a platoon leader, then it's 11 months. if you're like a special like machine gunner or a driver or actually if you're machine gunner or just a shooter then it's nine months so for whatever reason

again I was sent to 11 months which means that I'm on a course of either getting driver's license or becoming a squad leader so so but the boot camp is pretty much same it's like three months of sackfest that's what it is How much is left over from the Soviet military, or did they weed that out pretty good? Nothing. Yeah, nothing.

It was like in the beginning of like 2000s, but I went in like 2009 or 2008 and 9. So, sorry, 2009 and 10. By that time, there was nothing. But the previous years, like 2000 earlier, like it was stupid. Like they were like doing backflips and breaking, whatever

breaking wood with their hands jumping out from the cars that are moving breaking their legs screaming each other beating each other so that was the army initially so by that did that kind of start to disappear as Estonia started to work with the western

militaries yeah yeah absolutely it started to be unique for like the first Americans or Brits that showed up with these freaking border lines Russian dudes that are hitting each other in the head with blocks and stuff like this. Because like the like the transition was that the people who were in Soviet Union or in the army they kind of became the only people who knew anything about army.

So who do you take? So you put those guys in the army, but they come with the wrong mindset. And yeah, that's a that's a disaster. So you had a bunch of money. Now you go in the army and it's a suck fest. But for some reason you like it. Yeah. I mean, actually it was also like overweight.

Like maybe like whatever it's like 180 pounds. This is vodka and like. Yeah, good lifestyle. Yeah, eating pizza. Pizza and vodka. Playing poker, right? So that's not a great. But at the same time, I went to MMA training.

I did some jiu-jitsu and stuff like that. But that really lasted only for a year. And then I had to go to the army. So in reality, I was the guy who you see in the movie, who is always left behind, like, in the back. And then some people have to come and push you. That was my first month. What do they do? Like, let's say you got a person that just doesn't want to be in the army, and he doesn't care.

He's a conscript. He doesn't want to serve his one, two years, much less one year, doesn't want to be there for one month. So he's just going to not try. What do they do with that guy? They would just make them. do it. Pretty much they're like there are ways out. I mean,

they will figure out the fake injury and all that kind of stuff. But in reality, like, they have no choice. They just go through it. They just have to suck it up pretty much. And yeah. So then what's your first job once you get done with your training?

And what did you say your training was to be a squad leader? Yeah. Initially, it just would camp. There's no profession. You just go through the basics. You get to learn. how to shoot. Maybe you shoot.

At that time, you shot like, I don't know, 30 shots in three months. So you get to know how to shoot for sure. So then you do those like long hikes. So just basic soldier skills. That's what it is all about. But during that time, you get to a regime. You start waking up early. You go bed early.

So you get eight hours of sleep every day. But there's like night drills. So it's like a mayhem. And so by the end of the three months, I lost all of my weight and I was in shape. So now I was on top of it. Like I was in top five. And I started to enjoy it for whatever reason.

Because like you do certain things and things start to happen. So it kind of makes sense. And then all of my previous memory from the childhood when I was going to the forest and playing America's army. I was like... What's America's Army? America's Army had a game. I guess it's for recruiting. purposes and that was just a like shooting game like call of duty like a video like a video

yeah like call of d'clock confirm no idea yeah never heard of though yeah it was it was made by the american government yeah absolutely and it recruited your ass yeah so i played 2,000 hours of that damn yeah and then i switched that to playing poker okay because i already had a good attitude discipline i'm playing or sitting behind the computer but yeah then uh pretty much I kind of for a reason like got reminded

what I felt when I was young and I was like okay fuck that university stuff this is for me now and then the same dude

that we that we established combat ready with he was already an officer he was a company like tip like 2 IC in a company and

And he was like legit guy, like tall, strong. And he apparently had just passed this election to the special forces. But as it was such a new thing, like nobody wanted to let go of the good guys. Okay. So they tried to like hold the people down. They won't let them go. But he kind of gave a brief. that hey there is this unit cool american pictures people with night vision that hey these are the best of the best we are they will pay you a lot of money all of that was a lie of course and just the recruitment stuff and then i went to his office and look here i want to try even though i kind of never thought that i would pass but i was still like i had a huge ego that at least told me to

that hey I will try. So yeah, that was kind of like setting me like on a way where okay, if I get there, I maybe even want to be part of the army. So that's where I understood that I like it. Then I was eventually sent to the NCO. So the first three months is basic soldier skills. Then the next two months is squad leader training. And that's like an extensive really good training.

And I was fortunate because at that time, we were already been in Afghanistan for, I don't know, four or five years. And we like we have a Scouts Battalion, which is like one of the only like battalions that actually is deployed like professional army. And so as I wasn't in engineering battalion, there were like two dudes who came back from Afghanistan. and they were put to be the leaders of the NCO or the junior NCOs. So they came in and they started teaching us the real shit. So the level of training, what we got was like super high level. And this was in the NCO course that you went through.

Absolutely. So because they were like designated. There were two platoons full of like NCOs. And they were as like the commanders or respite. responsible for each platoon and they were like really legit they knew what they were saying and at the same time two guys just got killed in Afghanistan obviously they were their friends and now we obviously got all the good stuff from those guys because they were mad about the situation and when we did stupid things they remind us that this is for

real and that that kind of provided me the foundation for everything and it was really really high level good training and that was regular army yeah nCO course conscript service and then so let's talk about the the soft estonian soft there was like they originally tried to form a soft element years ago under the military intelligence battalion and it didn't work out in 1999 they created another other SOG force and apparently a member of the of the new special operations group attempted an armed robbery with his SOG weapons yep and they disbanded the whole unit yep so yeah there was like we have like a national guard so our defense is overall built in two ways so we have the reserve army and then we have like volunteer army and the defense league is like national guard and the

the first try on that was they put together people what they did pretty much they just did cool stuff so and whatever reason they got out of hand they thought that they are awesome and like as you remember everyone was doing crime they thought that

they will go and steal money from a dude like the dude was like they said that they are either I don't know which way it was but they were like they wanted to sell a tractor and then the dude were supposed to come there with, I don't know, 50,000.

And they thought that they will ambush them and like take the money. But at that time, those dudes came with guns as well because they know that the like doesn't make any sense. We're moving and then one guy got shot. So they were not really special in that sense. So they lost and then all of that was dismantled. 2002 they make another attempt to form another spec ops unit I guess it was and then by 2005 they had like a human element which is human intelligence they went to Afghanistan 2005 their mission ended up in 2007 and 2008 special operations task group is formed and this is where they start getting trained by US Special Operations Forces by the guys over in Sokier Special Operations Command Europe. And then by 2010, the you guys in Estonia are actually running your own selection course.

And is that when you went through? Yep. So I went through it in 2010. And so were your instructor was your course in Estonia? Yep. And were your instructors, Estonian instructors? Yep. was there any other was there americans was there brits was there anybody else just pure estonians so it's

it's just like a selection like uh just two weeks in hell oh okay that kind of thing okay so you get done with that and then what comes after that so then like first of all you get through it you pass it so we had like 16 guys starting and three of us passed so it's usually what was wrong with the other freaking 14 of those dudes or whatever it was they just wanted to to quit. But it's like the groups of people are really small. Like, 16 dudes and three passed.

Yeah. Well, you get incremental attention. Yeah. You can imagine. How many instructors were there? I don't know, seven,

eight. There's like two instructors for every dude at the end. So yeah, the, there was one. How do they torture you? Same way as here. Yeah.

Do they have cold water for you? Absolutely. You got a bunch of lakes. everything thousand lakes or whatever everything like you get everything like it's all the all kind of torture that you get uh no sleep like yeah there are a bunch of interesting ideas what they have what we run eventually i was able to run those things myself but yeah so we have like this like when you fall asleep and you get caught then there's like this small toy um from russian area like when you screw it up it starts doing

talk talk talk talk talk talk and then it screws down it stops now for each time you close your eyes you get one hour you sit behind the table and you have to turn it on you let it go and it goes for like 10 seconds and they have to do it again and there's a camera in front of you goes like watching it do so you do that so when people get 10 hours of that

so while other people are sleeping you go there and you do that. It was like, tuck turning. It's a small duck. So, and then there's we have like this dude called Toivo, who is just a, like,

mannequin. Like if you get two meters further from your battle body, you get that dude on your back everywhere. So there are like some fun things what we do with people. But yeah, it's pretty much like the Green Brays selection. it's just we don't have much people in terms of the participants

I think the lowest one was eight people came to the selection and one instance there was 21 starting only one past he was a hard man yeah so the attrition rate is really high but the dudes who get through are pretty good

and then what's so what do you do after that so after that it's like a Q course is it like the Q course yeah so where did you go for that so in Estonia yeah initially there's like the preparation course then we were sent to hungary hungary yeah we we did three months there just basic stuff i mean it sucked really and the main reason why it sucked because sadly it was really bad quality because like our conscript service especially mine was like really good

and the dudes that we went there like most of them were like already some of them had already deployed they had gone through real infantry basic training they were winning Afghanistan they knew how to do things and now you end up in a place where they are going to do you another basic soldier skills and sadly they didn't speak really good English so and their teaching methods wasn't really up to speed so it was just four hours of sleep for two months and And that if you close your eyes, it's like, it's morning. And the suckfest starts again.

And all of this is not like, it's just, it's not physically hard, but it's just mentally so hard because you're looking at just doing stupid things for so long. We did that part. So it made us like strong in our head at least. So we did that and then either that or super annoyed. Yeah. So we did that part. That sucked really.

but then eventually like there was some some issue with the Americans and the Hungarians I don't know whatever it was some sort of dispute because there should be now next step phase is MOS so you're learning your whatever and then eventually it should have happened

like a team training but the Americans didn't show up for whatever reason and then our command decided that this is not like logical anymore because this will continue the same way as it has been and then we were sent back and fortunate for us

a new like SETS, so small unit tactics camp started because now we there was nothing nobody to send us because our main idea behind our overall

situation was that we need to get NATO qualified and we need to go a NATO course to get the paper so all of what we did was four papers so we need to then eventually there was no people to come in Estonia to train us so what do we do

with dudes we sent them to school so then they sent us to the senior NCO school but before we had like three months of free time and what you do you take those dudes to the forest and you just do tactics and cover move all that kind of stuff so pretty much half a year straight we did only the sack fest stuff then you go to the ncio school and guess what that starts with same stuff same stuff again

so there was yeah one year of like nine months of basic training and you get good that's that's a good part about it and that was all while you were basically waiting to go to some kind of a NATO qualified queue course

of some kind yeah and so where'd you end up doing that so eventually like that took us like then about nine months I think in total so started in 2010 coming back March from Hungary then in August going to the school so I think we're five months in that school then there's MOS then I started learning again engineering so I got the new MOS and then eventually you have you can do the practice part in your own battalion and then we were sent back and then by that time we had like old school American SF guys who were like

like bodybuilders yeah two meters tall like super awesome dudes and they kind of started to do us the same stuff again because then we started again another SUT yeah another MOS training another team build up. So that's what we started again doing. But in that time, like, we were the only team. So again, ratio. Is there 80 of you guys or something you said? Something like that. Let's put it like that. That's like a small number. And then what happened is that like each MOS, like me and the other guy, we got one instructor. And that instructor was, I mean, remember JP was his name. And he had 25 years of stuff. He was from Ranger Battalion.

He had been in every conflict from whatever time until today. From World War II. Yeah, pretty much. Just a hard old green beret dude. Absolutely. And then they started teaching us how to do explosives,

how to do all the stuff. And then eventually we had the team training and then we supposedly was ready to kind of get qualified. And then we had qualifications. Then we put together a team and then we kind of supposed to be ready to go deployed. And your qualification ended up being engineer?

Yeah. And did the other guys get normal? Yeah, same things that we get. Like 18 Bravo, like 18 Charlie, 18 echoes, all the time of stuff. So yeah, pretty much same. Like you get different radio man, machine gunner tactics, same stuff. So now you show up. your guys are is estonian soft already deployed to afghanistan when you show up there so yeah so pretty

much when when we got back i think the first unit went in 2012 so martin again uh he was the first guy in afghanistan uh he was sent there to pretty much set up and figure out where we could be sent so he had a half a year deployment like okay go to afghanistan and figure out where we can go and he went there and then he started pulling strings starting building relationships and eventually

we had a province where we could actually go together with the 10th group I think and then the first team went there and then when did you end up going so I ended up going

in 2013 so we were like changing them out and yeah it was like a Lagman province pretty much similar situation

like there was not a lot of freedom of maneuver maneuver whatever freedom to maneuver yeah exactly so and it was in like in the mountains

it was just one valley shaped Y we were somewhere in the middle and the local guys obviously wasn't able to accomplish much but the first team then

they didn't start doing any DA didn't do any fancy stuff they just did what was needed what they said that hey we need to push the bubble to create possibility to start moving they started utilizing the local uh-a and a and started putting checkpoint checkpoints and then they started training the local special forces and actually in that province the the people that we were able to utilize were pretty good like uh like uh like It's hard to tell that. Usually, like if you say, it's pretty good, it's not good.

But they were pretty good. And they had their EOD teams. And they were like success rate in terms of finding like IEDs was 9, 97%. So like when we went out, that it was pretty good. That's amazing. Obviously every day or I don't know, once a week, someone blew up still. But I don't know for whatever reason. There could be half of the times they just blew up because they,

did something stupid rather than drive on the ID. So they were able to actually establish a really good system. They were able to pass the bubble and now there was a freedom of freedom to move. And when we got there, we pretty much now had ability to go start getting all of the dirtbacks. So we had one dude whose name was Joe Dirt. And yeah, so we started to kind of. established rapport with locals like the local unit initially we we kind of started training together to learn each other so that we don't shoot each other so and then when you go to the first operation

maybe one month in maybe one and half months like here is a bag put all of your cell phones here you take all of the cell phones and then you tell them where we're going and then you go out in the night in a random valley with two chinooks and you start killing bad guys pretty much it's it's interesting you guys were you were training for like four years of legit infantry and special operations training you must have been very gratified when you finally got on a chinook and flew out go kill bad guys yeah it was interesting like uh i was the guy sitting on on the edge and then flying in in the total darkness we have like two apaches covering for us two chinooks we are going in both of them like i don't know 50 50 people and then i'm sitting on the

back we are starting to get closer and then i just watch out from there and see like tracers flying i was like okay now i'm getting i understand where i am then i'm uh when we land like i didn't take any of my what is it the like the goggles that you hide i went there all of my eyes were full of sand so and then i hear like the apaches are singing already they are sending some hellfires to that mountains or whatever and this is your first op yeah that's the first up with like a bunch of afghan yeah we had like uh yeah we had how many of you guys uh it was like uh i think it was seven estonians and five Americans and then about I don't know 80 locals night time in the middle of nowhere and it was funny like we initially were supposed to get the like the special forces helicopter guys the

whatever they are 160 yeah yeah and obviously there was a higher priority somewhere so we didn't get that and then eventually we got regular I guess army guys and they put us one click away in the middle of the valley and then what we had to start doing is getting closer to the target area wherever the shura was and that was fun because we there was like the mountain was on that side and there was like this reach lines or like yeah this reach lines coming down so we went over the first one and that was like okay that's fucking sucks and you look at the locals like they they have their dress on they're just Chilling.

AK-47, a few mags or whatever. And then you get on the bottom of that, and you look at the next one. Holy fucking shit. You go up there, you go down, and you're like, next one. Then you are on top of the third one. So this is your first op.

Yeah. And you've already, you're done three. Yeah, exactly. And then by the time I was on the down on the third one, my legs were so full of blood that they just didn't like no steps up so what we did is that we did a chain and we just pulled each other up because that's how fucking bad the legs were obviously we had all the six plates in it all the ammunition was with me I had like five kilograms of explosives in the back I had everything only thing what I didn't have was water so we get on top of

the fourth one and they were like okay we can't go further anymore because we're already dead like everyone's yeah everyone's crushed yeah everyone's crushed and then like one of like as it was the last guy of estonians there's like other estonians are already down there go and link up with them i'll say okay let's go like i just go down random place down the hill and then i link up in a random corner and say okay other Estonians are here at least very good now we start moving so our idea was like there was like mayhem going on and then we had to go and confirm if we get the Joe dirt right we had a dude with a like a mask on we didn't know who he was he was supposed to be the guy who was actually confirming the dude and then we have like i don't know

maybe half of the afghans with us and then afghans at some point say that hey we don't want to go first anymore Our Zulu, for our Zulu, like team sergeant, he was like, I don't know, third deployment in Afghanistan. Is this Estonian guy or an American guy? Estonian guy. Yeah, he was in charge of the, like the lead element. Like the officers, they stayed on top, and now all incio was just going in there just to confirm. And then our guy said, okay, so Estonians go first then because we need to move.

We are not going to stay here. because I guess the Afghans they didn't like to use their night vision or whatever whatever the reason was they didn't want to go first so the first kind of street or first kind of where it's like just two like 50 meter walls no doors no nothing just a corridor it's like oh yeah that's a great place to go from so yeah we just took a leap of fate started going nothing happened then went more on and on and on eventually get to a place where the alleged bodies were because like I think the Apaches

they already like had killed like 11 and we just went there to pretty much confirm so I was put in one position to pull cover and then people piled to the right and then our dudes they found a body and now how do you get the picture? You take out your camera and you start to

taking a picture now what happens flash there's a flash now as the flash as the flash goes off there's like a machine gun fire coming from a random direction and so then the mayam started like bullets are flying over my head i have no fucking clue what's happening like first time in a contact like okay that that's interesting that's an interesting feeling so now i heard like that they say that they're in contact contact contact now they're there's like shots fired, but then the officers or the HQ who stayed on top of the mountain, they don't understand or they don't hear anything. So I'm like, okay, so should I become a relay now?

Or what should I do? So I just say contact, contact, contact into my RAC radio as well. So now they got it. Then the next thing in five minutes is that, okay, now we have wounded in action. Someone is wounded. So now I have that information to relay. I will continue that. Now they are in panic on the HQ there

because it's our first real op. And then next thing is like, okay, Apache, we have only like seven minutes left of Apache airtime. So Apache would like to start shooting someone. But as the only ones who have the blinkers are Estonia, and one American, then we don't know where to shoot because there are a lot of Afghans

and where they are, we have no idea. So then I started having a conversation through radio with those dudes to figure out are they in line, are they in right place? Now at the same time, I had this amazing equipment. So we had this night vision goggles

where in front you can put a thermal site. But if the thermal science battery goes out black it's black nothing so at the same time and all of that is going on and I'm like doing my job and figuring out then obviously black then it's like oh this is getting only better then I kind of whatever I ask the guy next to me to take over in terms of this position I change my battery I coordinate that yes all of the dudes are out from the way I relayed that information And then on top of me, Apache started singing towards whatever compound. After that, everything was silent.

And now our team sergeant understanding that, hey, we just climb over four mountains. We have been now, I don't know, two clicks into the city in a random place where we have no idea where we are. It's our first operation. And then he decides that, hey, okay, let's just fall back. So pretty much who got wounded, it was one of the turps. his like fingers were shot off or something and then we just started going back Did you get Joe dirt?

No, absolutely nothing No no no And then we started going back And the dude who brought us there He came to me He was just there in the epicenter Like I have no idea where the fuck we are Can you lead us back to the beginning?

I said I saw how fucked up he was I said yes no problem I had no idea where we we are just starting going in one direction and figuring out the way so i started to be a point man so i pointed us back to that hill we eventually somehow got to the place where we came from we climbed up to the mountain and then we're like so yeah i wonder do we now have to climb back over all of those mountains and then get the helicopter to break us up like we would rather stay

here and fight for whatever amount of days because we are not capable of doing that And obviously, then magic happened. Two Chinooks came. They were hovering. And we were running into the Chinooks, and then we got back. And I guess we had like three people captured. I don't know who they were. I have no idea what we did, because it was my first time.

I had no fucking understanding of what's going on. But all of those things happened, and which was like really fun, like when I talked about those experiences, that all the laws of combat were just utilized. on the first operation and why i was able to do all of those things because of our training like that nine months of like training paid off because like it was all covered move it was keeping things simple understanding what the hell do become a radio man which i have never been relaying information like understanding where we have to navigate back prioritize and execute

decentralized command like all of those things sharing bottles of water like everything and so yeah that was the first thing it was it was interesting how was the debrief on this operation so debrief was pretty fine in terms of i don't even feel like did you feel like a we got some shit to fix no i i or did you feel like you did a decent job we did we did like a decent job in general like uh because when we get there like we were high-fiving like when you got home yeah we when you got to the base like back to base yeah we got the back to base it is like I can't even remember debrief like I can't remember it you are just too fired yeah I guess I was like I don't know rushing there but I remember like first thing what I did is like I opened up my coke bottle and drank

that and we were sitting with three dudes and then the team sergeant came in what the fuck are you doing here why is your gear off hey maybe we have to go out now so better go get prepared so he just pretty much vanished our dreams yeah of relaxing here we were like oh laying back starting to like debrief how we went and like but he came in and he was like a hard head like he was a true team sergeant from ranger school yeah that kind of we did so so yeah he he he He, he, he made me a human. Let's put it like that. So,

how, so that was your first op that you went on. And then what was your op tempo like after that first off? It wasn't, it wasn't really like high. I mean, because mainly what we wanted to achieve is we wanted to achieve, like our intent was to make data safer.

And pretty much all of our, like help the locals start doing stuff. push them out, don't go and break doors before them. So that was the kind of idea. So I think we did overall like, I don't know, six, seven, like huge operations. And some of them were like, we go out with thousand people. Nobody wants to mess with you. Like nobody.

So there was like no like extensive fire fights. Thousand people being like. Locals. Like almost all locals, like 800 locals or something like that, 900 locals. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Were you involved in the training? of those local nationals as well. So that's what you were doing.

That was your job. You're training these guys, getting them ready for operations and then roll out. Exactly. And build relationships and pretty much help them with whatever they needed.

So as we had like, our guys were able to speak Russian. Like we were, we have the common enemy because they had fought against Soviets. It was much, like, it's much easier to like bond

if you have a common history. So, and our guys were like able to speak Russian with them. commanders, like, things were good. So, and as the previous, like, unit, they did a really great job of building everything up. It was, like, pretty easy for us.

And you're saying that your forces, your Afghan forces were actually pretty squared away. Yeah. I mean the, the special forces part or the police, whether it's BRC or whatever they were called. But in A&A, they were, like, random. Like, every time you, like, our camp got attacked, they were shooting every direction. So, so they were still like everyone. Did you, so did you live on a camp with them? So we lived in a camp where we had a privilege of having a, I think, like we had a

battalion of Americans who were pulling security for us. And we were in the middle in our small camp and we were able to do whatever we wanted pretty much. So we were privileged. We didn't have to pull any security. We didn't have to do much. We just only thing what we had to do is figure out how to make this area safer. and how much did your field of vision open up as you started doing more operations and now you're more aware of what's happening and maybe paying attention like oh let's make sure that the helicopter puts us down in the right spot which is always a big one yeah i mean it's a crazy thing echo charles so if you and i are going to get dropped off by a helicopter like 30 seconds in a helicopter means we have to walk an extra six hours like it's that it's that crazy and so you can you can be looking at your map for

reference like oh there's that ridge line cool I'm gonna put my map away because we're almost there and two minutes later you're off like so far off and that's why we always would have if we could he those would drop us off and then they would maintain on station like somewhere in the vicinity so if we were five kilometers away or something we could call them back and say like hey wrong spot but in Afghanistan it's different yeah and because if you call them back in now you just made a huge signature so sometimes like oh you're just going to have to deal with what you're just going to got so from there on I mean we kind of went in in the night then we did some like 24

hour operations where we go in the night we kind of like I don't know two 360 to the village which is like huge village like it was funny that we were preparing for callouts in Estonia like and when we trained it there's like one building in the middle we gathered around we and we go there it's like yeah it's city who are we going to call out here so we totally had we prepared for wrong things so but eventually like like eventually like some of the operations were like I got assigned seven locals and it was me and those were fun fun ones and what type of operation would that be it was like you have to you have to pull security on the south side

with with those dudes and you have to be relay because other dudes will now locals we go in there again following a Joe dirt or whoever we want to capture. So we try to pull security. Now we put together in one place. Then you navigate to a random, I don't know, area. You set up an OPE or covering position and then you stay there pretty much and wait for others to do their operations in the middle somewhere.

So, but those were the fun ones. Like you go there, you have zero ways of communicating with those dudes. Just hand signals. else. And but and then in the first five minutes when you're there, like we go in dark, we have no idea where the heck

I am. And all the other guys are going away so everyone is separate. Now me with the seven dudes, I'm like okay, I have no idea where we are. But I know that soon in one hour there will be a little bit of light. So I will wait until the light and I will

have a little bit better understanding of the bearings. Then I move to the covering position and then we just stay there. Then as the first light comes up, three of those dudes just go away randomly. They just leave? They just leave. They go into the city. That's awesome.

Now they come back in like 45 minutes. They come back with some food. Food, yeah. Yeah. So then we talk or eat. I don't want to eat their stuff because I know that then I have zero platter control and I mean in a worse place. So you can't put your eyes closed. you can't close your eyes, you're just there.

Looking for enemy. At the same time, Apache's are coming. There is some action going on. So those kind of operations started to happen. And eventually, as our, like the buildup for that was like, I think, three months. We were not able to be at home. So, and we didn't have a next team to be prepared to, like, switch us out. So initially we had to be like eight months.

And I think on like, month like we was okay you can you can come home because we have nobody to send you so we started pulling out from there because pretty much our overall intent was to showcase and get the qualification that hey we have worked together with americans we have two like guys going there we are now good in terms of books we have done something now it's good nobody got killed nobody got injured let's get the fuck out of there and let's concentrate on the stuff what we have to do at home now because now we have done our job in terms of that now the next dudes who came out or like in the in the in the in the very last moment when we there was like this one awesome operation that was planned for you guys

while you were still there yeah so but it did it didn't get the green light because it was too crazy like there was like a taliban like training center Oh, nice. Obviously, like numbers are always wild, but like 100 Taliban or whatever. And we will go over there in the middle of night and let's start doing things, right? But that never got green light from the higher. So we got, we, the other unit came in from Slovakia, I think. And then I met like 10 years later the partners in Estonia in random bar, just walking in a bar and saying,

hey I know you we were running in Afghanistan together like they were deployed in Estonia and then like okay how did your deployment go after that and the there were like two Slovakans got killed so most likely they went and did that kind of stuff so there were like low operations but a lot of as you know like unlucky and crazy and wild ideas because if you don't get the momentum in like if you're doing one operation in a month if you're doing one operation in two weeks you don't get this muscle memory yeah you get the muscle memory you get the repetition get the reps in basically it's it's nice to be able to do those yeah like yep we're going i remember when i was on my first deployment to iraq and i was in bagdad and my my boss my commanding

officer's like hey how much time do you need to be able to launch on a mission and i was like 15 minutes and he was kind of like no seriously like and i go no seriously if you give me a target and you give me the frequency of the conventional forces that own that battle space and location of where they're camped at, I said 15 minutes, we could be wheels up. And we actually launched a couple times on very short notice, like 15, 20 minutes, a couple times.

One time we did it, and guys were like in, not in uniforms. And that was kind of jacked up. I was like, hey, bro, you couldn't put on a uniform in one minute. Like, he had 15 minutes to go. But I look up, like, We're rolling out and I look at the turrogunner ahead of me and he's wearing like just random American clothing. Jeans and stuff.

Yeah, like literally jeans. Because, you know, he was just sitting around watching a movie in his tent or something. So he was wearing like board shirts, board shorts and a t-shirt or something. And it's my fault, obviously, because I didn't say, hey, here's the standard. When we roll, get your freaking uniform on. So I was, you know, had to tighten that up. But yeah, we would, we could roll out pretty quick. And it, but the thing is, the reason we could roll out quick is we were doing reps.

Like we were doing so many, so many hits that it was just like everyone knew their job, everyone knew what to do. And we could do it. We could do a whole operation only with standard operating procedures with no brief whatsoever. Like breach team one, you got it. They'll figure that out. Assault team, you know what to do. External security, you're good.

And vehicles, you'll get squared away when you check out the terrain, the vehicle commander, I'll put you guys in place. Boom. So, yeah, if you kind of wanted to get that part, then you should have gone to infantry in Estonia. Like, like, if you go into Scouts Battalion, they were like 10 years in pretty much in Helmand. Oh, man.

They, like, they had constant firefights every day all the day. Like, like in six months, I don't know, 300, 400, like contacts. there was one like Estonian company number eight which was the bloodiest one like they they got there was a one squad

like I don't know 12 people and there was only one person who hasn't got injured they lost few people and they got like hit really hard there but for us our one was like nothing like operational tempo there was like perfect first mission

that's what it was perfect first deployment yeah i actually feel that way about my first deployment too because it was like the enemy wasn't that settled in yet iEDs were kind of just starting uh the the ambushes were honestly like not that good this is 2003 2004 so and we were we kind of had the upper hand when we'd roll out and then by the time 2006 rolled around it was like okay i You know had more Awareness of what was going on yeah, absolutely and and we like you know it's funny I talked about Helos like doing heloops I never did a Helo op never I never did a helo op never I never did a heal up in combat because we just took vehicles Yeah, and and even like in Ramadi

Helos wouldn't even they wouldn't you couldn't do missions you couldn't do a mission in Ramadi with a helo If you had a wounded guy you couldn't get him out on a helo you had to get him back to base on to a secure part of the base and and then a helo could come. But there was no like going out on an operation in a helo for us. And we did it zero times. So the, which is, you know, kind of, kind of interesting because what's interesting about it is when I was a kid in the teams, we would do training missions and they would call,

we would use vehicles. We would use like big six by trucks, you know, like big five ton trucks. And they would call them in the brief, they would call them a helo truck as if to say, hey, if this was real, this would be a helicopter. And so my whole career, I was like, yeah, of course, you know, if war happens, we'll have all these helicopters. And then as it turns out, the way the war went in Iraq anyways,

I know it was different in Afghanistan, but in Iraq, and look, there was definitely people that used helicopters in Iraq. I wasn't one of them. Like we just, we had our own vehicles. We were gonna get to the target, we were able to do it. fast in Baghdad it was just we all we used Helos one time in Baghdad but it was to we had captured a high value target and they they took him so they like met us and took him which was kind of cool

but other than that didn't do it and then in Ramadi couldn't like there's no helos in the city even the even the Apaches which are like flying tanks mm-hmm they would barely roll into romadi because it was like just massive when they did roll in it was scary you just hear freaking the whole city lighting up like trying to shoot them down so the helo truck thing we actually did a bunch of i mean we i did so many operations in five-ton trucks you know it's kind of crazy we had a gatling gun on one of the trucks oh nice there's like like usually like the same thing what happened with the dudes who later went to africa they got like british trucks which looked like that you don't want to mess with it.

And like all the people who got ambushed was like in front of the French because they had like weak looking vehicles. So and they're like they don't want the Vikings to come. Yeah. Because if Vikings come then it sucks. Yeah. So. Yeah.

We had that too like on that first deployment to Iraq. So we didn't have armored vehicles. Our Humvees were just Humvees like with cloth doors. so we took the cloth doors completely off. We turned to the seats so that the seats were facing out. And then the guys sitting in the Humvee, obviously the driver was driving, but everyone else was facing out with their weapon out.

And then in the back, we had heavy weapons, including these articulating arms. And so these things looked like, we called them porcupines because it was, and obviously we had the turret gun. And so it just looked like if you mess with this, And there'd be whatever, four, five, six humvies that were all just look like porcupines.

And it was a very good deterrent. We got ambushed a few times. But it was, we, we drove a lot. And to have had that little amount of, to only get ambushed a few times and have been on the road for countless hours, you know, hundreds of missions, like, that's pretty good. That kind of told me, like, the enemy is looking at us going, let's wait for the next convoy to roll by. Well, that seems like a good idea. Like, same thing. They don't want the Vikings.

Yeah, they don't want it. They don't want the gatling gun starting to shoot them. That will be a bad one. And there was like those random times, like we were just driving back from somewhere. Once it was like the, like the, our checkpoints that was established, they also did their test fires towards our vehicles. Once there was like, an American dude was on the, behind the 50 Cal. and there was like this one like the hinge

was up and obviously the bullets were in there so they were like to random places where people could get killed but nothing really like happened so we were lucky in that sense but the next team they were not so lucky

yeah Estonians I mean they deployed to Iraq since 2003 and Afghanistan I think also in 2003 like constant on the ground presence from our allies in Estonia. Yeah. And suffered some pretty significant casualties.

Like in Afghanistan, I think it's nine killed and 90 wounded. And then in Iraq, 18 wounded and two killed. So for considering how small your population is, that's... Yeah, we were second, sadly. Oh, you mean in comparison of population? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, in terms of lost.

I think the first one was Danes. They were also wild people. So yeah But that was the price That we had to pay to get advancement in our army Because that changed everything Equipment got better The knowledge got better

We now know what to teach to our conscripts Otherwise before that I mean we were breaking I don't know Bricks with your hands So that kind of changed How was it when you got home from this deployment So first thing

What we did we went to drink obviously so there was some like the first things like it was hard to kind of get back to the normal life I mean there was like

a lot of stress like we had more problems when we didn't go out because if we stayed in our team sergeant he liked to find us jobs to do so we had a lot of meetings we had a lot of stuff so we had internal, I would say, stress rather than outside stress. When we got back, the brain was a little bit stressed out.

You couldn't, like, you read the newspaper. The biggest news is someone got a huge ass and that's the biggest problem. So you couldn't kind of comprehend what this world is here. But that went on pretty fast because we didn't get much time to rest. We just went to start doing j-sets, going, doing, some training with seals going to Georgia and going to states so we went on the road and yeah and are you thinking that this is going to be your career are you thinking you're going to do how many years do you have to do to retire there so in

reality like I had like five-year contract but you can get out from the contract whenever you want yeah so there is no rules there are like some some some people like saying that we have to change the rules because people can get out pretty much whenever they want. So, but yeah, pretty much it's not a system like over here. So you have to, like, you have to do the Conscript Service, which is one year. And then first I got like this trial time for one year. And then you get, you get the security, like top security clearance for three years.

And pretty much it will be three years, then five years. So. But once you get, like, I'm talking about you personally, what were you thinking? We're like, look, I just, I done all this training. I went to Afghanistan, I had an awesome deployment, we're doing J sets, what's next? Were you thinking you're going to be a career soldier at this point? So I never kind of wanted to have a career.

Like I wanted to get the experience. But at that time, I kind of like was there. I did really good in terms of like I liked it. There was the first time I started learning with intention of wanting to learn. So it was fun for me because the development also was uphill all the time. And then when we came back, like, then there was a problem of not having enough work because there is, like, not many terrorists born in Estonia. So being a warrior without a war has its problems.

Yeah, pretty much like that. And then we were like, well, also we were building our unit. So there were like a lot of things that we had to do internally to spread the knowledge and stuff like that. And then eventually we there was opportunities to go to Syria. There was a lot of like other places. But none of the politicians just kind of wanted to send us anywhere. And until until then I think it took like six years when or seven years to get again to the area where there could be some combat. So there was a pretty long period. But that time I kind of like we went to now in a. training mode. So Ukrainian war started in 2014, right? And then we figured out that there is a

way to support them. So we started doing some stuff over there, helping the Ukrainian forces together with Americans, Lithuanians, Polish, Latvians. And during that time, I kind of have a daughter born and that she was one week old. I had to go away for a half a year again. And then was the time was like okay I don't see any action coming and I made a checklist pros and cons and it was like 14 zero to go out so there was not much of decision and yeah so then I just pretty much said to my team that hey I'm thinking about other stuff and I was like 27 I think that I will try something else because now it's the moment or otherwise I will kind of stay here So and yeah, then it was time to let the other team know and then pretty much I started looking outwards.

What insight can you give us on the Ukrainian military? So they were really bad at that time. So when we went there, yeah, they, like civilians sent to the front line, not with my training at that time. So when we actually, like we have like this huge exercise of springstorm. When our, like, the whole country, NATO, like, sometimes it's like 10,000 soldiers come together and we have an exercise, which all is played out during one month. So we're one month there's like maneuvers and all the kind of stuff. Everyone gets to train. And it's like live. Like there's like a huge FDX.

And then we ask like Ukrainians like, do you have also similar exercises? They say, yes. We have it. So, but they work differently. it works like this like for one month you train and it's like theater like because you know that in one month generals are coming to look how we're doing and by that time there's like trails and then you go there and you fall at some place the tanks are coming so it's all charades there's nothing really there and that was kind of the training that what they adopted from the

from the from the russian army that was the style of training so they're basic skills were pretty bad and we were able to kind of help them to share the understanding of what we knew what i would say that what they are on a really good level is like all like explosives building poopie traps building iEDs that's where they are on really really high level and they started to incrementally like war will teach them yeah like eventually and uh i would say that at the moment they are pretty good on a pretty good level they obviously have the will because it's their it's their home yeah they have no no like yeah i mean from 2014 until now when the war started then i think that uh if i'm not messing up numbers they had

sent through the front line like 300 000 men and i think that they had like 14 000 or 11000 casualties during the 10 10 years so they were in war all of that time so they they learned some hard lessons and from our point of view we were able to learn in terms of our intelligence we're able to start gathering information I think Estabuania was at one point like one of the centers in terms of the accurate information that is coming from eastern side so we we are human and our some of our services started to get really really good information and they got really good like training out from all of that Meanwhile, after that, you decide you're going to get out.

And then what's your plan when you get out? So, you know, you've got to earn a living. What do you decide you're going to go do? So, yeah, I had a, I had an apartment. So I thought I would sell that. And then I got like, I don't know, 40,000 euros on a bank account, which I figured that, okay, for half of that I can pay years rent or something. And then other, I will invest in poker.

so I figured I left off with poker I was pretty good at that so I figured I would start that again and then I started playing poker and actually the problem was that I was doing too good and now as you're doing good

you think that that's something which will last and in reality what what lasted was that I was winning money I never like lost in terms of I like I always made money

but my ex expenses were for whatever reason just going higher and higher and higher and higher and I didn't like check the balance I guess or I don't know what the fuck I was doing So eventually I ended up in a situation where I was minus 30,000 in like one and a half years later I needed to win more bro Yeah, absolutely because if you want to like earn like I don't know free four thousand in a month You have to have about the bankroll of I don't know hundred thousand because the highs and lows are so crazy. So there's so much variance.

So you got to be able to dig yourself out of a hole. Yeah, so we have to have a bankroll. And if you don't have a bankroll, you're just stuck. Exactly. There's no stability. Like you can't get stable because you can't get the money out because you need it to work. So eventually, yeah, there's no stability there. And I was like putting in hours.

So for me now, all the time. So I got together with the mother of the child. like just before deployed. And then we were together like six years, somewhere in the middle of my brother was like born. And then I kind of like tried to figure out things. And then when we moved to Tartu and where I was from, then the rent went even higher

because I started renting in house now. And you're literally the only income you have is poker. Absolutely. And then like thinking, start to like don't work but I'm never like looking at the red flags I'm thinking okay if I do that I was kind of like contingency planning all the time so I was kind of like prepare I knew that I can whatever happens I can dig myself out from it so I always took like leap of fate okay maybe this works maybe it nothing works and then eventually like I put in hours so when I came back I was like

how do I schedule my day because I had no idea how to like operate outside from someone telling me what to do and the only thing what I knew is that okay in the military we had schedules like this is how your day starts this is how it ends and then I just made a schedule I planned every hour and then I had the schedule like a Saturday was a rest day and every day I played poker so now for me I was always home but for my family I was working was it online poker most online and most online So I eventually played like 6,000 hours in total. So I was sitting there like I think $2,500 a year or maybe more.

So 10, 15, 16 hour days sitting behind the computer just grinding, grinding and grinding and grinding. Is it fun for you? Or are you just working? It's, it is fun. It's fun and it's working. Like eventually it becomes work. It's a beatable game. It's just a skill game, I would say.

It requires the same thing with every other thing. You have to learn, you have to be disciplined, you have to manage your bankroll and right level. You can't go and play, if you have 1,000 euros, you can't play a tournament within 1,000 euro buying. You have to play 1 euro buying because then you can play 1,000 tournaments. But yeah, eventually you're able to make some money,

but it just, I don't know, I was somewhere in a tunnel because of my ego and everyone outside was thinking, oh, Remo is doing so good. He's living in the right apartment. He's living large. But in reality, everything turned into shit. So obviously, as I put so many hours, I was not able to build a relationship with the mother of my child. And then eventually, like, she came in at some point where everything was already shit anyways. And then she said that he found a more awesome dude than I, which I kind of agreed. Because to me, that was like a way out. I actually pushed forward a hard conversation.

I already saw a long time ago that this is not working, but I just postpone it and postpone it and postpone it. And that gave me a way out. And then when I got the way out, then that was the moment when I kind of stumbled upon on your book. and then on the first page first I thought obviously where did all of my trouble start it was my mentor who led me into this hole

it was my like mother of my child who sucked things it was nothing to do with me and then I pretty much took that book and read the first chapter didn't take much more to figure out that

I had to look into the mirror and then I just started grinding for the first two weeks pretty much I was I had 500 euros I had a rent to pay which was like 1,500 so I knew that we were going to split I have no place to live they don't have any place to live so I called a few of my buddies I said okay I need 4,000 euros another loan and then I figured out the place where they could live and then there was my friend who was the same dude who talked with my uncle and cried and that hey I need something to do he was like going to his friend's farm and then it just went there for two months in the summer and what I did I just uh destroyed buildings like there was some demolition yeah yeah something like that with whatever and just

thinking about life and now I was like huh I'm like I don't know, 30 or 29. I'm like in the biggest toll of my life, I'm a retired. I'm a soft guy. And I'm actually like nothing. I have nothing. So I was in that spot.

And then I started asking, okay, what should I do? And then someone recommended me that, hey, maybe as you have a military background, we're starting to have a defense industry now. So maybe it would make sense that you start. asking them because and then I went to the defense industry page there's like I don't know hundred companies in Estonia and I just listed out seven of them because first one was like they were doing like empty shells that you can fill in with explosives or plastic explosive so you can heat those under their bed and they are not considered as weapons but if you add

the C4 into it it's a actual it's an actual like M14. It's like... Claymore? Yeah, it's Claymore, but also like this directional charge. EFP? EFP, exactly.

Yeah. So as we were testing those things when I was in the army, I thought, okay, maybe they would like to utilize my knowledge. They said, yeah, you can contact us in half year. Okay, cool. Then the next place was Milram. And then I sent my CV over there, just info, mail. hey maybe you want me into your team and then what company was that milrum robotics okay yeah

a historian company and then there was one dude who replied to me and he was a he was a one of the commanders uh in my previous unit and he said of course come in on monday and i went in on monday and then there was a work interview oh nice i was sitting there and i saw the toe there's two other dudes from the soft and there's other dudes so there was only four military guys in front of me and they just told me what I will start doing I had no option awesome and then they asked me so how much do you want to get paid I said I need 1,000 euros I don't care about anything else I need that then they all started laughing like that's how low bowling you are like that's such a small number so you will get like 2000 straight away and i was like okay so you want to tell me

that i have no skills and you are going to pay me like for learning 2 000 a month that's good for me i only wanted 1,000 to get by and then i pretty much figured i just read a book outlier before that and then there was a section like there is sometimes things happen which shouldn't happen with you. And now most of the people miss them, miss those opportunities. And I figured out, okay,

that's the opportunity that I shouldn't have. And then what I started doing, I just started. What do you mean that's the opportunity that you shouldn't have? Like, it shouldn't, like if I just,

if my friends were not there, I wouldn't get in. Got it. So you don't deserve it? So, like you don't deserve it, so you should really get after it? Yeah, so, I mean.

Or is it like you shouldn't do it? Because you don't really deserve it. In terms of like, if you look at my CV, I would never get that position. So you were lucky to get that job. Absolutely. And you felt that.

Yeah. And you're like, all right, I'm going to work hard. Yeah, I'm just going to do everything I can to make this happen. And I look at all the other people and said, okay, I will outwork all of you. And I was first person in the office, last person out from the office. And I just pretty much got after it. And when you have that attitude and you have back against the wall, I mean, nothing is stopping you. And then how long were you doing that for?

So I was doing that for three years. So I started from being a program manager, which was like, I don't know, you get a one army and you pretty much start building relationships. In reality, it was more of a business development sales job. And this is when you say one army, you get an army from some other country. Yeah, absolutely.

And you're like, you're going to work with this army from this country. And you're going to sell them weapons, systems and work with them. First customer was like, I got designated Italy as a first customer. Like on the first month they came into Estonia that they were interested in our robots. And what we did, there was four military dudes sitting on one side of the table. On our side of the table, there was other four military guys. And what we did, we just talked. Then we went drinking.

And we had good time. And that's how we started to build. relationships and it took me and then like one and a half year of building a relationship and eventually yes we got deals like i was like okay so what are you doing this week we have this amazing update would you like to know more about it so that was kind of the stuff what we started doing and eventually like it was like a total startup word where we didn't have the product ready and we were like yeah our machines are capable of doing terminate or stuff but in the it, you know. And then I remember I had to go to give a presentation in Italy. And the way how it

worked was that there was a huge tender. We were competing against all the huge companies, Ryan Metal, Leonardo and all the European big ones. And then I had to go there and provide a presentation. So the product that was presenting was invented day before. in a slideshow and the name of that was ISIA2 or something like that a really complicated name and then I got the brief

and then I had to go and present that to 50 kernels and I was like hmm and then I went there just spoke something in 20 minutes I have no idea what I said

and then the head of the overall thing is like hmm I like what you said you know why because you're the only military guy here you had the structure you were like simple clear and concise like all right Roger that I have no idea what I just said but if you say

so then I'm good and I was able to like build a good relationship with them and eventually we got to understanding of what are the tender terms as I had a good relationship with them then we were able to get our team together we we wrote a lot of poetry into the tender and eventually we won. I was like genuinely believing that we are able to we are the best like partners for them. And then eventually we won the deal against all the big ones. Nobody believed in it. And that was one of the biggest deal at that time in the company.

So and I was head of that. And then I was head of that. And then I remember that was one of the best lessons I learned that when we went there and I, we already kind of knew that there was a lot of poetry. and when you go there and you are sit down and then they start asking questions about things that you know that you don't have right in in a right order and then we called it that I was like like I don't know how to say it but like we went there to get on the knees yeah okay yeah and that's what we did like it was a really awesome experience of understanding how

that works. But eventually we were able to start delivering them. We were able to cooperate with them and we were able to eventually help them. But that was the world and that was like in Europe eventually as I was successful in all of those things, eventually I got designated to the Middle East and then I started going to the Middle East. Now what I did, the only thing what I did is building relationships, making connections to everyone. And then obviously who do you, like how that world worked for me. Same time when I went to Italy, there was one guy from Flir, like, and the Black Hornet driver. He was from Norwegian soft. And you just, if you speak with them, you know that, hey, you have this language that you can actually start speaking of. And then I

ask, okay, actually, I'm like my main area of responsibilities in Middle East now. He said, yeah, I'm there as well. So, okay, next time when you come there, let me know. So next time I go there, I let him know. He tells me that, hey, we are drinking. Come and join. I go there. He puts me and he puts me on behind the table. Next to me is like a president of a company in front of me.

There is another owner of the company. They just won like a 70 million deal of drones or something. They're just celebrating. And now I'm there. What we do? We talk military stuff. We talk nothing about our products. We just drink, have a good time.

Next day, they remember that, hey, we had a good time. So what are you selling? Oh, yeah, we have these robots. I don't know, come and check it out. They come to, oh, this is really high-tech stuff, yeah? Of course, yes, it is. And then you take like three months from there, and they pretty much bought one without ever seeing a demonstration or nothing.

So it's all relationships. And then you start working on. So what I always did is that I built network, which started, so I always gave, I utilized pretty much decentralized commands. So I'm covering building relationships. We understand our intents. And then eventually I let them do the job

because I have no idea how to do anything anyways. Like I really don't know. So the only way I have is to let them do it what they know. And as they have a good track record, they start connecting people. and eventually you're running in all the countries and you have agents on people there so only thing what you have to do is just manage them

provide them information and how that world works pretty much so then at what point did you recognize that there was another opportunity in the world in terms of teaching what you had learned in the military to other people so I kind of like recognized it

in the very beginning when I joined the company because obviously at that point I thought that the only thing what I know is how to shoot and blow things up because that was my profession but then I started realizing that hey that experience what we had

because we were growing as a soft unit right then the millroom was exactly like that there was people especially there was military people and they actually had the same attitude as they were like as there so it just started

pretty much understand that first of all the book that was a really easy guide for me what to do and eventually like I started understanding the day it's exactly the same you just have to have the right attitude so I understood that I have to have the same mentality how I got through selection so one step at a time not giving up being a team player building relationships trying to support all the kind of stuff and then eventually I started understanding that hey there is something there I started listening more of your podcast and stuff like that and that point I started putting together some

PowerPoints randomly like you put together a PowerPoint you think that it could be a course then I think I went to whatever page I really didn't get far further than making an account on some page I never uploaded anything I did anything it was just I had a lot of PowerPoints in my

PC. Then I contacted two other dudes Martin and one other dude and pitch them, hey, let's do something our own. But they were already like going to university doing some other stuff. So nobody wanted to do anything. So I postponed it until one day, I don't know, maybe it was two years in Martin called me. And he said that, hey, I went to speak with in one company, but me. military decision making. So MDMP and they really seem to like it. I held them solve a problem or something. And it was okay.

And there was like one person who had transitioned to another company and she wanted him to come and speak about that again. And then the problem statement, what was in the email, was like, my people are not taking ownership. Like this is not a military decision making problem. This is like ownership problem. They need something else. And so what I would do is that, because I had already observed all of your stuff so much,

that I said, okay, we should like just talk about what's written in the book, or give them a book or I don't know, do something about it, because they don't definitely need that. So he kind of was like, but I don't know, let's try and put it together then, together. I said, hmm, okay. And then next day we founded combat ready. I went to the I don't know

I looked Okay what is what is their name Israel on front All right So what could be our company's name So he took some

military vocabulary Just started scanning So what could be our name So randomly Combat and ready So everyone is facing some battles

or combats in their life So they have to be ready for that So I don't know It makes sense Whatever I like it And then

we established that Because in Establish It's all digital Like you can do like 99% of stuff you can do digitally everything in government like we are like

E Estonia it's like one of our like I don't know It's like the pride of your country Exactly Well that's actually something to be proud of Because here in America These fools dude You want to get something done in America

You gotta fill that shit out Dude triple a kid And then you're gonna get some other form you gotta fill out And then you gotta fill out the same form Like you're filling up the same information Over and over and over again It's ridiculous

So good job Estonia. Yeah. So yeah, everything, banking, everything is online, like signing things online,

everything is online. And then what, so in Estonia, it takes 15 minutes to establish a company. Damn, nice. You go there, you fill out some forms.

I don't know, you, oh, that's what we do. Whatever, and as he was an officer, he knew things about the right. He's filling out the forms. Yeah, he's filling out the forms.

I have no idea what to do with those forms. So that's what we made clear, in the very beginning. You're a form guy. You do our finances. You do our housekeeping on that side. I want to do nothing with that. And I don't know how to do it either. Check. So then how was the first gig? What kind of company was it? So it was a like insurance company. Startup as well. We went there again seven women looking at us and we are talking something about extreme ownership. we also put in the military decision making we also talked about things that we knew and then

the first reaction from them is at home makes sense like all right we got something and I remember when we were walking away from that place to we were high-fiving like huh that felt good yeah so we actually did something when I when I talked to a for my first civilian company I walked out of there going and it's actually when the person asked like I went through the brief, the combat leadership brief, it's the same thing that we give Eschleon front. And I got done it. Then I started answering questions.

The first question, when I answered it, I was like, oh, this applies to everything. And I knew, like, we got something here. So that's how you felt. Yeah, I already knew it while I was implementing those, because it was so obvious that this works. I even bought everyone, I even bought everyone in this book in my team. Because I saw that they, like, they had. they complained about

we don't have a time we don't have enough time yeah I know you come in nine you leave at four so I'm coming in at five and leaving at seven and I have plenty of things to do and everything gets done so you like I understood

that they were in comfort zone already they have egos like military guys still so they were not paying attention now I gave them the book and then eventually one one guy reads it and he calls me like one month in like hey awesome book I really liked it now I understand

whose fault it is that everything is shit the CEO I was like of course now you understand it really well so yeah so I kind of gave up on that but yeah I really understood because things started to go in the right direction like everything started to turn around in my life and then so you started turning around your own life now you get an opportunity to go talk to these seven women they're kind of high-fiving what year was that do you remember it was two 2022. Okay, so that's relatively recently. So are you sure?

So, sorry, so 2021. 21. Okay. Because commentary is already three years old. So okay. Yeah, 21. So 2021, you do this first event. Now what's interesting to me is a lot of people would have said, okay, extreme

ownership, cover and move, simple, prioritize and execute, decentralized command. I get it. How about we go? Total responsibility. How about we? How about we go fire and maneuver, keep it simple, stupid, analyze and prioritize, and then empower your people. You see what I'm saying? Like, you could have easily just said, I see what they did.

I get it. I'm from a different country. I could, you could translate the exact same words and just be like, in Estonian, I would never know it. You're a stand-up human that was like, actually, no. We got them from this book. Let's give credit where credit is due. But, you know, for me, like from a humility perspective, like, that's pretty awesome. You know, for, I mean, everyone's competitive.

And, oh, those, you know, we're the seals, you know, they're just doing the basic military stuff. Or we know stuff too. So where'd that come from? I think, I think it came from one just because. We did one, like one month long training in Norway with SEALs, SEAL Team 3. Are you sure it was SEAL Team 3? Yeah. That's really weird.

Most of the time they don't go to Europe at all. They were like responsible for Europe. So it was either Team 2 or there has been some funky deployments. Maybe it was two then. It might have been two. Yeah. So you were SEAL Team 3 or what? I was SEAL Team 2, Seal Team 3, Seal Team 7, and Seal Team 1.

Okay. But Task Unit was what Cruiser was? Seal Team 3. Okay. So then it was SEAL Team 2. Okay. Yeah. So because it wasn't the same number.

Okay. So yeah, it was SEAL Team 2. And we were doing things over there together with them. We formed the one task force. And I really just liked what they were doing. I mean, there were junior guys who were totally junior. and they were designated initially drivers to us and then we were driving them to their operations

and stuff like that and then I know they were the first unit who kind of didn't throw other branches of army under the bus so they have a different attitude they were training all the time they were boxing and we were living in the same anger so I mean they were like kind of legit and there was like really huge wins

at that one day when they had to go out there Wind. Yeah, wind. Yeah. Like really strong winds between the fjords and then they have to go an operation. And in the middle of the night, I take them to the port. There are local people tying down boats because they have a storm, which even had a name. I can't remember what the name was.

So I already see that. The name was Satan's breath. Something like that. And then they went out. Even though they knew. that there will be no reach or they will never reach to the place where they had to go but they had to go out because it's a good training right that's what we do yeah and then they came back they were so fucked up totally wet totally like done and then i kind of gained respect on that and also

like at the same time they they got a call in there was one i don't know oil tanker taken over by someone somewhere and they started switching their locks out the the FTX locks or is it epic I don't know whatever it is like blue ones which you can insert in your own weapon so they took those things out and we're like okay what are these guys doing they are actually putting actual stuff together so and then oh we can't tell you okay fine and the next day we read from the newspaper that seals went and I don't know rescue the ship or onboarded it and took it down then there was a lot of celebration the HQ stayed there we continued our operations but that kind of experience eventually like, we had respect because they were kind of legit, obviously. Yeah, that's awesome. And it's good that they don't have to like think it. It was really the first unit that kind of impressed in that sense

that they didn't throw anyone under the bus. And sadly, I can tell that the green brace, they threw seals and everyone else under the bus constantly. So anyways. It's a strange thing because it doesn't seem like it, but when you talk smack about other people, it doesn't really sound that good. You know, if when Echo walks out, you know,

to go grab a drink and I'm like, you know, Echo's not really that great at Jiu-Jitsu. Like, who does that? You know what I mean? Like, that's just such a... And I would say also like, I don't know, I worked with probably like 10 ODAs or something like that in total. And they're like, there were like ODAs,

which were like totally legit. Oh, yeah, totally. And then there were like something. of them were like one dude or two dudes were like had the eogos and they kind of shit on all of their yeah and dude don't get me wrong i mean every unit has some dudes in it with that are i know we had them losers and they're the biggest he goes ever and broadly speaking most dudes like are good mugs like you go to a oda team you go to a raider platoon or troop is the seal platoon like the dudes are good dudes and there's of course there's some loud mouth in there and there's someone that's

disgruntled and there's someone that has you know insecure and so they're going to talk smack but most dudes and of course you know it's like when you're in the dudes that you meet you're like oh these guys are good to go most of the time so yeah and I think that that experience kind of gave me that I wanted to share the respect and continue it and then when we saw those principles and actually like hey let's build a relationship with those dudes because we have no idea how to do any of this and they have been doing it for 10 years. So why not? Let's let's let's, I don't know, let's partner up.

Because we would have to invent a bicycle. Like, and there's no point of doing that. Yes, we can write our own book, like extreme responsibility. Or we could maybe be smarter and say responsibility extreme or I don't know. But that's not worth it. So yeah, we wanted to start from the right foot. And after that training, we decided, after high fiving, that let's write to you guys.

We figured out, I don't know, I think we were not able to find your emails. We have like a contact page at ashorefront.com. Yeah, exactly, something like that. But then we did our OSINT. So we had a pretty good training in terms of intelligence, how that world works. So we went back, I don't know, five years to do your first page. And then we got all of your emails. And then we just added you guys there in the CC line or whatever

And then started sending the first email Leaf was the one responded back Thank you for your service Two guys from Eastern Europe And go to the academy and see what's up And then we went to the academy So the academy is our online training program So Laif was like hey that's awesome

Thanks for your service Go check out the academy Yeah exactly but we want the partnership Which props to Leif You notice he responds. Absolutely. Good for him. Yeah, absolutely.

I always joke, Leif is way nicer than I am. Absolutely. Like, he's, like when we go meet people, he's talking to someone for nine minutes, you know. I was done in 30 seconds. And I'm not a bad person, but like, hey, how you doing? It's good to meet you too. And Leif's like, so where are you from? And it's just like, he's just nicer than me.

And, you know, he gets an email. He's like, hey, thanks for your service. Check on the Academy, you know, right on. And then like, I bless him. Then we got that report. And he's doing that great. I mean, we were so happy that we got an email back.

Like, okay, we have something. And then what we decided to do is that, okay, let's start then providing value. Because like, what can we do? There's nothing what we can do out here. Let's start grinding through the academy. We saw that, okay, it seems not to be digitally perfect because there was some, it was like very first time when you went online with that. so we started seeing things and then we started writing feedbacks that's a really great way how to build

relationship you start telling what they're doing wrong especially from the point where we were we knew nothing in reality so that was the form of value what we thought that hey like let's do that they are talking in all of their post that they appreciate feedback and stuff like that so we can't go much wrong so starting doing that that really didn't work out we were really really sending a lot of emails I think eventually we didn't get much replies anymore because I don't know because I never saw them yeah absolutely and then eventually like we thought that hey so this is not working and were you still did you still were you still bringing on clients at this time and you were working no no no

you're still trying to figure out how to get this thing launched for real because we both had the the real jobs I was still like flying to Saudi and and stuff like that doing the other other stuff. So that was kind of like a hobby. Let's see what we can make out of that. And then we thought that, hey, so what options do we have? So they have an FTX somewhere. Most likely we should be able to showcase that we know what we can do

because it seems to be a military training type of stuff. And then we said, okay, 4,000, whatever it was. all right so Martin told me that hey let's let's go there yeah so where do we get the money so like huh

I had like a credit line like I don't know with 15 or 20% interest I took a loan like oh now we have tickets I already bought them oh so now we're going yeah we're going

so now we kind of had it in April so we I prepare the home base a really good one of course we had zero pictures of us in civilian clothing I would say because the first time I even bought adult clothing was when I joined Milrum until then I just had t-shirts and then I had to wear a button-up shirt and stuff like that so that was the first time I had adult clothing and then first of all we didn't have any pictures we only had pictures from military clothing and then everywhere what we decided that hey we want we don't want to

do anything behind your backs we want to do it the right way so i created the home page uh with chaco here chaco there lift there extreme ownership here so that's what we do and then eventually we started we had a vacation for two weeks and then we flew flew to states and our plan was that hey let's go there we have already provided so much value to them by providing them a lot of feedback. So let's go there and let's see what happens. And then we eventually arrived. Then we had the first, I don't know, meet up or whatever.

And then I had an app, I don't know, weeks or whatever it was. And then I started getting like hits. Like someone is watching our homepage from Dallas. 10 hits. Which means that, okay, now I knew that they knew. know who we are, what we do, what we kind of want to achieve. At least they have a poor part understanding. And then we said, okay, now we will never initiate any conversations with them ourselves

because then we will look needy. So we will not be needy. So now the only thing what we have to do is just go there and perform. And then the next came in, next day came in, and then first exercises started. Yeah, it was honestly, it was so legit to watch. I wish I had film of it because it was like I would say like it was like jih Tzu black belt against white belts and how much but it's different because Jiu Jitsu in its in its nature looks sloppy. You see you understand what I'm saying like yeah if you're in its nature there's moving that yeah if you didn't see it before or whatever this was like a different thing it's like watching someone do a different like a like a sport like the hurdles or something. Like do each like a decafalon and everything they're just like smooth and just and yet and you're literally watching people that have never done a pole vault before

Imagine a dude that's never done the pole vault before and he's running down the track carrying a pole for the pole vault like this is a disaster Yes, sir. And in the midst of a guy doing that a guy throwing a javelin backwards, you know like a guy like dropping a discus three feet from the circle a guy jumping on the on the long jump like three feet and and then falling on his face. That's what we're watching. And then there's two guys that are just like mechanically just slaying. And I immediately walked to JP.

It was probably JP that checked your website. I walked up to, I'm JP, like, who are these two dudes right here? And he's like, dude, they're Afghan soft. Like, I go, or sorry, they're Estonian soft. They deployed to Afghanistan. I was like, check. I go, this is gonna be awesome. And yeah.

So it was, that was a freaking great move. That was a great move that you guys executed. And you, you, I would say you had me at Hold what you got move forward. Like one of those things where I was watching is like, okay, these guys are in the game, you know. Yeah, and that was the thing. Then I think we did like two runs and then it's like, okay,

sitting down, hey, we would like to do the same thing in Estonia. And you said, okay, now you got my attention. And it's okay. Now Martin, we like mentally high-fived each other already. Let's not fuck it up. anymore let's just keep cool and let's continue we continued that and then we got the green light from you and we brought a flag with the message that hey we gave you a stonian flag with the message i remember that this will when you have a hq this will be first flag that you pull there

in front of your hq there you go and yeah i mean that's that was the planted seed then we got back we saw that uh this ftx thing works because we had no idea how to conduct it initially and then we went back we gathered up a group of friends like i don't know 15 and then we run our first trial so we rehearsed and obviously we got a really good feedback then we next martin was working in i don't know governmental company and said okay we have this new training idea and maybe let's run all the departments through that and obviously we did it for whatever nothing and then that started to build like yeah like we we had content then i made another amazing video which sucked of course and then we said okay we have no

idea how to market anything so the first person we came in like was one lady okay we need marketing and she initially thought that who are these military guys you're selling some military stuff she didn't understand anything but eventually we got her on board and she started made me made us a new homepage and then we started doing Facebook content and with that was also awesome thing because so far the eight years of Waila was in the military

we didn't have any Facebook nothing zero, zero social media. And now you guys tell me that I have to start making videos and speak things like to other people about how to, I don't know, live their life. Like, that's fucking stupid.

Who does those things? And then I had, like, I made, like, videos. I need a 30 second clip. I, like, did maybe 40 takes. And then I said, like, okay, I can't do it anymore. And look at this. Oh, yeah, it's perfect.

No, it sucks, but okay, give it a shot. So in the beginning, Martin did all the videos because I just didn't want to do it because it felt so fucking weird to speak some things to other people and teach them whatever. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. And then eventually, like we had, I think,

four or five FTXs. I did like two-hour keynote of introduction in my company. And we had the same idea like, okay, we have to kind of, like in the defense industry like if you go to the customer and they first ask

does your own army use your equipment and if you have no then you're pretty much nobody wants it why so you want to sell it to us but your own government doesn't want it so we figured that okay

if we are able to like kind of help our own companies to improve then we have like yeah we did it over there already it works so we started with our own companies and then words started going around.

We got our first customers or something like that. And by the end of that year, we had, there was, I think, like a conference. Whatever the conference was, we kind of got a classroom. And obviously when we went to see where the classroom was, it was on the third floor in the furthest corner. And we thought, okay, nobody will find it.

And then, when we started talking about it then for whatever reason there was 100 people and nobody there was not enough room for people to get into the room and I think that

that day I was like had been drinking until 4 because that was the way how you build relationship in defense industry so that was my gig like I went there on a conference and every day until whatever and then I had two hours of sleep and we and I gave first English keynote which was perfect

it was perfect right I couldn't have done it most likely in any other condition so it went really well and now we said okay now we have again new information out there and then I started thinking okay how do we make it every time when we go there we have to do something bigger and something more bigger and by that day By that year, end of that year, I think we maybe had run, I don't know, five trainings or something like that.

So nothing much. And then as we didn't have any understanding of how to do the classroom trainings, we just figured out some things. It was like, we talked about so many stuff that you can't imagine. We talk about everything, indirect method, ego, like all the things that you could possibly talk about. But still the feedback was really good because nobody has previously ever talked about it. So it doesn't matter if the content is so good, like they say good. And then eventually, like, Martin had to go away. So now the company was pretty much on me because he left to Europe to run some huge projects,

which meant that he now was our source of finances because he got a good salary. And we were just doing, I don't know, zero money, zero nothing. so we're not making much money but at least we had our jobs so we were able to leave on that but we were making no money

and then we had to start bringing in new instructors sorry I'm actually speeding up so the first year after we did those first gigs for whatever reason me and one other dude were like talking hey so

like in Estonia like you can get a like a mark if you are best leadership or training company like instructor

or whatever like how do you get that like and I was talking with one dude and we were like okay this is most likely a corruption

anyways like it's just a pointless piece of thing and then in one week someone called me hey you have won an award

we went there all of that news went to HR so everyone started understand that there is a company who's doing things differently. They are from ex-military guys. So it was like a new thing. So, and especially like the war was just started. So we were in right timing. So everyone was, we got everyone's attention. And from there on, we just continued on

growing and growing and growing, started to implement the same stuff. So would you already left your day job at this point? So I ended up my, I left my day job by the end of 2022. Got it. So one year in, I think that 2022, we ended up with like 70,000 as our overall revenue. So because we were able to end like half of like 50,000 of that was the after September or something. Because it's like continuously started going really, really high. And then he had to go away and now I needed few guys because I were not able to do it alone anymore. Then there were some dudes coming to me, hey, hey, I want to do the same stuff. So what do you want to do?

I want to be an instructor. Okay, so these are the terms. These are the, we can't pay you any money, but you can do a lot of work if you want. There is a lot of opportunity here. We have seen Chaco in real life. So we were like, awesome dudes. Like we were already like interesting to other people in the military.

So and then we started doing that. And eventually what happened is that second year, we had already like, we had like 450,000. as a revenue. So, and we never focused on any numbers. We're just doing the right things for the right reason. And the second time I went to the same conference where we had a classroom. So how I kind of got us to the main stage, because we didn't know anyone.

And I went to the, I gave an interview because there was like a interview of some of the speakers from the last year. They asked me to come to the office. And I said, okay, so now actually what we would like to. to do is that we would like to get on the main stage. Like, okay, so who is your, like, who is the decision maker here? And she led me down to the stairs and showed a dude sitting in a corner who was doing something with an axle.

So it's okay, so I will go there and they jump in, take just one step in and said, hey, we need to get on the main stage. Can I sit next to you for a minute? said, okay. So I kind of like went there and nuked it. Like just everything went out straight away. Then I sat down there and he started saying like, hey, actually I don't know what you guys are doing, military stuff. We actually have here like we want to talk about peace and stuff like that. We don't want to really bring any military stuff in there. And they were like looking for prime minister to come and speak on the main stage. And it's like, what does a prime minister know

about leadership. So but I can see that is this the schedule? Yes. So I can see that here is an open space. So could you just lead your mouse there and just write combat ready there and that you just lead his mouse to that place and wrote combat ready. And that's how we got to the main stage. Just default aggressive going there saying what we need and we got it. So and that's how we kind of ended up doing everything. Just going there and asking or telling, I don't know. I don't know how we did it but we just pretty much default aggressive has been always to think yeah that is obviously default aggressive going there and make things happen and look can you be too default aggressive yes you can it's called it getting kicked out of buildings it's called you know hey security

yeah but if you have a good attitude and you're like being professional with people my the guy probably saw something yeah when you were talking to him and there you go making it so next year In business, the new guys that we recruited, I started going there together with them half a year. I kind of showed them how I do it. So I gave them piece by piece. Just talk two laws. Now talk three laws. Now talk four laws.

And that's how we get them going. And by the end of the year, one of the dudes, he got awarded as his next trainer of the year. So we have been able to do that two years in row. and just everything started to go. Now, what was one of the things is that we still didn't have any contract with you guys. So we were just still,

we had no PowerPoints, we know nothing, no actual information. So everything, what we actually teach was like what we saw from internet. And then, so pretty much what we did is like,

kind of like, like we got your word, but it's kind of like illegal in a way. But yeah, we were saying that we got it from there, but I mean, We just invented things. And then we just took a leap of fate.

And then I decided that, hey, okay, this doesn't seem to go anywhere. And I just started treating you guys as a management board or board of directors or whatever. And then said, okay, every quarter, I will start sending you Citraps, which you didn't ask. So just started sending those ones forward,

sending, sending, sending, and at some point in the end of then, in 2020 three, I think Lindy or someone. I think it was Lindy. Yeah, in like in October or something like that. Like, hey, now you have reached, like you have, you have become into our priority list over here. And we would like to now make it like official. And it's like, yes.

Eventually, like two years, we are there. Now we had a really, really hard conversation in terms of contracts because everyone's saying like, it's really difficult. to have contract with Americans. A lot of legal stuff, a lot of different terms. And our agreement was very simple. Like, Lindy was saying what was expected from us. Like, these are the numbers. I said, no, we can't do it.

We can do it with these numbers. She said, yes, okay. Then there was like some other similar stuff. I said, no, we can't do it. We can do this. Okay. And then in one week, sign, where do we sign? here and it was done

and then next year again we were in a classroom we were on the main stage and now in January the same event happened it was a start day it's like a huge conference and then we got your video of explaining that

hey combat 30 is our new certified instructors or whatever and that was on the main stage now everyone knew it was like article in the newspaper and stuff like that You like that echo Charles Yeah

And that's where like everything Like went there Like we just utilized Like we were like thinking Martin like what do we have to do We just have to do what's written in the book And if you do things What's written in a book

You can't go wrong And eventually if you do the right things For the right reason Things will start happen And that's how we got here Yeah I liked when you were telling me Yesterday I think You were saying like listen

You and Martin were saying Listen We need to do what it says in the book and if they do what they say they do in the book we're gonna be good to go yeah and sure enough we're good to go I learned something echo Charles in Hollywood sure what I learned in Hollywood deals is when the principles want a deal to happen it's gonna happen and the rest is just like people you know make it they're gonna make it happen but here and so that

That's part one. Part two, one of my favorite things to do in as a combat leader is, I would just say do it. So like on the radio, like Leif would call up and be like, hey, Jocko, we got another building. It's two blocks down. We saw some squatters coming out of that.

We wanna go hit that thing. And it was just like, that was like such, it's even just like a little bit better than execute execute. Execute, execute, X. You say like at the beginning of an operation, it's cool. Look, is it cool? It's cool.

To have like some other branch plan be coming in with some explanation behind it. And to have the decentralized command where it's like, hey, we need to bump across. Hey, you know, hey, this is, hey, Jocco, it's late. We got to move across this road. We got a, we got another vehicle. We want to inspect down here. I might have to blow the trunk open. Do it.

You know, it's just like, so good. And so like when these contracts is like, I get a long email like, hey, with the thing and the this and the that. And the response, do it. Oh, yeah. I've experienced that one many, many times. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, do it. And I gather that same thing.

Like, I see what you're doing. It's pretty freaking though. So I get it and respect it. And that's what we're doing. We're doing it. Yeah. But really, honestly, the, the seeing you guys in the deck decafalon on the battlefield, the FTX battlefield was like, I was so freaking pumped that you guys were so squared away.

Because part of it was, like I said in the opening, sometimes I would watch and I'd be like, dude, is this too? Like, am I crazy? Am I, is this too hard for people to actually be able to do? Like, these people are going insane. Like, have you been, you haven't been to FTX? Yeah. Oh, you have?

Remember one of the OG Utah in Utah. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, okay. You see people going crazy. Like, I need four more guys over here now. And by the way, like, no one's going to die. Or like, you're totally freaking out. And these two guys were just like robots, just Terminator robots.

And I was like, who are these guys? And it's like, oh, they're Estonian special operations forces. They deployed to Afghanistan. I was like, oh, Roger that. And I think actually, JP was like, they use our principles. Something like, I don't know if that was what he gathered from the web page or whatever, but, you know, JP's always, like, doing his research and stuff. So, yeah, so you combine all those things together, which each one of those things was, like,

doing the right things for the right reasons. And also, I, I, that's like one of the things. the conversations I had with my team. I was like, hey, they could be teaching, you know, total responsibility and that. And they're not. They're like, cool. And let's, like, these are the kind of people we want to work with. There's no, did you guys, don't you guys want, didn't you guys want me to go to Estonia?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, we, we said like, hey, can we, like, we have those kind of ambitions, of course. But we realized on the very first in the beginning that that's not going to happen. Yeah, I mean, at some point, it will make it happen. I'll probably do like a full European tour. Oh, Charles.

We're going to go start and end in Estonia. What up now. Yeah, back in the day, you know, when I was at SEAL Team 2, get some. Deploying to Europe and guys were deployed to Estonia and like everyone loved Estonia. They thought it was like they were in heaven. Yep.

And so, but I never went there, unfortunately. So at some point, we go into Estonia. We go to rock and roll. So how many instructors do you have now? So we have about seven instructors. And then what's their qualification process look like? I guess you already went through it. So, yeah.

I mean, we kind of change it. So we have now belt system. Okay. White belt, blue belt, purple belt, brown belt, black belt. Now everyone... By the way, we have... We have, that idea has been a thing at echelon front. Bro.

It's not a thing, but it has been, it was on, it was disgust. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think I was probably the guy that was like, well, that's jujitsu. I don't know, but we didn't do it. But that's. And we defined all of the belts what they mean. And at the moment, we changed it like a month ago. That's what we did.

Because we wanted to have a very specific way how we can actually like understand who is where. what is your way of moving forward so at the moment other than one person everyone's white belt and it's not it's not easy to get the next belt so it takes years and it takes certain like modules that you can have i mean most of them they because we had our own own stuff right we were not like doing specifically as you have been doing and now as we have like trained together we have now better understanding of how you actually teach those tools. So now we're just reorganizing all of those things. And now we are able to actually teach things specifically the way you do it. And we are much more precise. It's more, much more useful. Because so far, I mean, our average

score, because after every training, how we got here is like we asked feedback from customers. And like the average score, like in terms of numbers, it's like nine out of ten. So it's a good stuff, but it wasn't as practical as we wanted or it wasn't, it didn't have the fine tuning. Now, now we are fine tuned in and now we have kind of like a blueprint. And it takes only like, I don't know, a month or two for them to get to the blue belt. It takes another month to get to the brown belt. I don't know, will anyone ever get to the black belt? But definitely somewhere in the middle.

so because we are able to affect because we have like a lot of people who have like previous coaching experience and working with companies and we have run like long term programs already but we just didn't have a system so now we just established a standard they established a system which we can just internally understand so most of them are still able to go and execute with every customer but it's just internally something to measure and you just came out and went through our our first on front our first train the trainer program where it was a nine month program that you went through that most of the nine months was virtual so you guys were doing calls and zoom calls and giving briefs learning briefs and then had then i think there was a total 10 people showed up here in san diego

to get certified and yeah it was pretty awesome because it was like uh give your brief and get really good feedback and everyone had already kind of built the brief where everyone gave a great brief like i told like i told everyone today it's like giving a brief is not an easy thing and giving a brief with specific content is is challenging and then to give a brief with a lot of pressure where you know you're going to get picked apart that breaks people yeah and and everyone everyone from a bunch of different industries came in stepped up and and delivered an awesome job and then we do like a hardcore Q&A murder board. Do you guys say the term murder board?

Yeah. We had it in the, already in the NCO school. We had that for two weeks. Oh, two weeks of. Yeah. If you want to be an instructor, like every NCO, every senior NCOs, everyone who wants to be a senior NCO during that school,

which is half here, you will have two weeks where you have to instruct. I know, here is Carl Gustav. Teach it. And then you get a, specific template which is like timed you can spend five minutes on this you have to say these free words you have to provide an intent you have to have an instruction in the end of the course you have to have a practical session like

it's very much laid out and now you have like you get like free topics which you have no idea about and then you have to precisely give it based on that template and it has to be timed and now the difference is that the if I like the murder board is full of the same dudes. So you get one squad, each one gets free lessons, and now for two weeks you're just grinding. And if you're murdering that guy, they will murder you. And most of the time, like the people who are the weakest,

they get murdered the most, of course. Because people start asking so stupid questions, and then like that guy freezes and that, no, that's not a pass anymore. So that's how we, like, roll. But that gives you like a really good, like, baseline. And I think that's where kind of the instructor skills came from. And as I was also explosives I had to conduct. And that I trained other people to be able to blow things up.

So I had that experience from there. So dealing with safety and being, I had all the papers in terms of being, learned how to do IEDs. I learned how to demonstrate, like what's the word? unexploded ordinance diffuse them defuse yeah yeah all the kind of stuff so

and now if you start teaching those things you I mean it's very basic in terms of but we had so much like repetition yeah and that's the thing is it makes you competent as an instructor and that was the goal of the of this training program

this train the trainer program at national front now most of the people are people that are coming from their company and the purpose of this is to be able to be an internal training in your company. The only people that we took from that's going to go and do this training outside is just you and Lewis.

Yeah. And Lewis is a character. Absolutely. Because here you are, Estonian soft. And Lewis is, well, first of all, he lives in Estonia, but he's not Estonian. He's from Australia. Yeah. So he's from Australia.

And he, his background, he was a comedian. Yeah. And he was a comedian and then he ran like, he brought, I guess there was no such thing as standup comedy in Estonia. Yeah. And so he started stand up comedy in Estonia. And then you talk to him and it's like, oh, the way that he got that going and made it work was extreme ownership and the principles of combat leadership. Yeah. Which is such a great like, you know, normally I'm like, oh, we work with all these different companies, you know, this oil company.

construction company, finance company, insurance company. Now I'm going to be like, stand-up comedy company, you know, like, let's go full range of motion on this gig. Yeah. And yeah, he, he, like, as he's putting it, like, yes, these principles also work on crazy people. So they work on everywhere. It doesn't matter where you are. So that's why we're able to actually, we have been able to influence so many companies already. Our government, we're able to, we're working with ministries, we are working with kindergartens, we're working with schools.

We are working with the Defense League. We are working with military again. Like, I mean, startups, hundreds of companies have gone through the training. And, I mean, this principles just work. Yeah. It's pretty awesome. Speaking of kids, you guys just, well, now you guys have your own publishing company. Yeah.

Right? And you bought the rights for a kid's book called Way of the Warrior Kid. You ever know that one, Echo Charles? Hell yeah. And you guys just released the Way the Warrior Kid Book One. Yeah. It's going to be released on November, in the end of November, before Christmas. Okay.

Actually, speaking of which, I think this might have happened. I think you just emailed me a little while ago and said, hey, we're modifying or whatever. Can we modify the way of the warrior kid so that Estonian kids aren't trying to memorize American presidents and the Gettysburg address? Because that doesn't really make sense in Estonia. and I believe I'll have to check I believe that I replied do it I'm pretty sure I'm gonna check it was like two words

but it was along those lines yes yeah if it's do it I'm gonna be pretty pumped yeah and that's how we made that happen like when we saw that we like we have a blueprint you have created a blueprint that's how it is that's how simple it is just do those things what you have been doing here

do that in your country do that in Europe wherever and then I love the story of how Chaco publishing got published like how that company came to life that's a good story and then watch this yeah yeah and then we like like initially like we wanted to start giving out that book like I don't know we actually asked a another publishing company in Estonia who has came out with these books and hey there is also a kids book that maybe we would like to like that would be useful for kids and then they were kind of looking into it but then i mean like 2,500 was i think the fee and then there was like 8% but they wanted to have it like it was 10% fee but they wanted 8% so they were not we are not able to make money so okay fuck it and then watch this and then

we took like another half year and then i heard that you're making a movie yeah and i was like better get in on this strategically we have to do it now that was a good move dude yeah that was a good move the movie is gonna be um you know we the movie is wrapped echo charles you heard of that before yeah that's a hollywood thing yes sir it is see i got to say hollywood words for echo charles to make sure that he knows that i'm aware that i said a hollywood thing because if i ever if i was just now just be like yeah well you know we wrap filming on that project We we but it is kind of a big deal to wrap and I'll tell you why because

until you have it filmed anything can go wrong like there can be a strike someone can get hurt there can be like some crazy lawsuit like you just don't know what can happen and and it's like the difference between having it wrapped and not having it wrapped is like the difference between graduating from seal training and being somewhere in the pipeline in which there's no freaking guarantee that that's happening So that's pretty good to be wrapped and it's a smart move that you formed your own publishing company bought the rights and now when that movie comes out you're gonna sell a bunch of books Absolutely that's the point and the most importantly we're able to impact some some of the youth

100% and Actually like we have like this youth organizations under defense League like I know scouts boy scouts and girls and stuff like that they were our one of the first customers in terms of who we went and practiced because like okay like we get like hundred years yeah and we have a whole weekend to test out these principles how we should teach it and that's what we did constantly we spread information to the youth so we got our repetition in and then okay this works this doesn't work at all so we tested it on kids

and kids loved it so definitely we have been able to impact a ton and we have also been able to go to Balkans initially we thought that okay because there was a company in Estonia who had subsidiary companies outside and from Estonia and we did one gig with them and they said okay we have four subsidiary companies in the Balkans we want them to do it again to do the same thing so we went to the first company, we thought, okay, now it's Estonians coming to Balkans. Like, there's a cultural difference most likely or stuff like that. So we did one first training. It was much better than Estonian because Estonians are like stone people. They have zero emotions. They don't ask any questions. They're like, yeah, like not very social people. I'm like not, I'm not

don't know, Renaissance anymore. So we went there, and now the first month was their best revenue ever. Like, after the first month, now the HQ, everyone.

Let's go. That's the story that's been repeated over and over again, Echon Front. Like, some random person in one of the departments of the company scrounges together, some money that he,

that he saved from some other project that they were doing, brings in Echelon Front, and, like, the growth is there, And the next thing you know, we're working with the whole company. And that's, that's just happened over and over and over again. So the fact that you're out there in Europe being able to make this happen.

And again, you know, it's like, we say in the book, Extreme Ownership, these are not new random, like these are not principles that we created from dust. These are things that we learned that were passed down to us. And they've been so, they've been tested over and over and over and over again. So it really isn't that big of a surprise when a company hears the principles takes the principles, implements the principles, and they have their best their best profit, their best engagement with their teams, like the whole thing. So it's pretty awesome to see. Yeah, and that's the thing. What we say that if like we try to be an example because in our opinion, like the best way how to like change our culture in Estonia is to be a good citizen.

and do a great job and being a demonstrator of those principles. Now, I've always said, like, if we will fail, all of what we have teach to you doesn't work. And that's why we initially, with Martin, like, okay, every business book says that it should be like 51, 49. It shouldn't be 50, 50, because there will be a dispute and there will be a problem. And we were like, if we are not able to figure out a problem, then we are not supposed to do it anyways. So let's put it in a situation where we have to do it in the right way. If not, then it doesn't matter what we speak. It doesn't work anyway.

So don't listen to us. Just look what we're doing. And we are moving in the right direction. We are doing the right things and things happen. And what's the ultimate goal? Well, the ultimate goal is, first of all, to change Estonian culture, help people, help take youth. Because, I mean, we are dealing with symptoms, which is the adults.

we have to help the root cause. I mean, there's so much, if I would have, while I was in the school, if there was someone who actually would have given me and teach me some of those principles, I would have been way better of prepared for life. So what do you want to do? We want to strengthen our own culture.

We want to have a nice place where we can live. And also we have to help our neighbors. So we want to just, We want to make Europe great. I like it, man. Yeah, so that's what we do. And yeah. Does that get us up to speed?

Yeah, I think so. So for people to find you, you guys are at www.combatready.e. You're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, all those at Combat Ready. You've got your personal Instagram, which you are very apparently proud of. So it's Ramo Oiesta.

Yes. I'm going to just say yes. Yeah. And so that's spelled R-E-M-O-J-A-S-T-E. That's where people can find you. I think Lewis wanted me to say that the web page should be Europe. Dot combatreddy.

because we are I don't know upgrading it okay but you can find it from both places so what's lewis's instagram people want to check out his uh it's uh louis zezeran at louis zezeran yeah and does he do funny stuff on there does he do leadership stuff on there yeah he's always funny i you always learn stuff right yeah like when we teach these classes you know you're always learning stuff you and i had i learned from you about you know decentralized command and the expansion of simplicity and the expansion of relationships and what which is which is something that I've talked about before but you were like hey you know what decentralized gives you is a culmination of with all these things time very good excellent so I learned that from you was that excellent

to learn and then from Lewis what I learned is Echo Charles Lewis is a comedian sitting over in the corner right now and he was given his brief and he said hey when there's a there's a technique called the readback if I want to make sure that echo Charles hey we need to show up tomorrow at seven o'clock in the morning we need to be prepped to record a podcast with four people can you hey just to make sure you I made that clear can you give me a readback and you say yeah push on up at seven o'clock tomorrow recording a podcast got to be ready for four people okay cool boom that's called the readback so what Lewis pointed out was that you can use the read like comedians use

readbacks because it gives you a a second to think. So if a heckler calls out, you know, and this is what I did. So I was like, hey, guys, this is a technique that he used. And Dave Berk was sitting there. Good deal, Dave. Yeah, you know it. And so I said, like, Dave, like, you know, heckle me.

And Dave's like, you know, he's kind of like what? And I said, like, heckle me, like, say, you know, something negative or whatever. And he goes like, yeah, who cut your hair? And I go. And so I was like, oh, read back. Because I got to think of a comeback, right? Who cut your hair? And I said, who cut my hair?

Your mother, when she left my apartment, boy. But it's true, like those little, that's a little technique. And it's a technique that you use as a comedian. It could be a technique that you use as a leader, not just to make sure that you've confirmed someone's comprehension of your information. But if you do something I don't expect, I can actually give you a readback to give me some time to think and to clarify that I understand what you're talking about, by the way.

And as actually he gave a whole like note about it where you can like the read back itself can be funny. You know, I can miss read back your thing. I actually noticed that when comedians do what we call crowd work. They do the read back and how they use that is they'll read it back but the way they do it to make it sound funny. They'll just adjust their tone. And I'll be like one time I'd be like, hey wait, that sounded funny but it wasn't funny. That's when I noticed it. He was like, he'll be like, oh, he's like, what's your name?

Oh, John? Right. he'll be like, what do you do? He's like, oh, I'm a, you know, a manager at a tech company. A manager and he'd look around at a tech company. Everyone would start laughing. I was like, wait, wait, wait, that wasn't really, see what I'm saying? But I saw, oh, I know what he's doing.

He's buying time so he can think of his jokes. Is he what I'm saying? But it's real subtle, but yeah, you're right. That's good. That's very smart. Yeah, interesting enough, like we had a discussion with Louis and readback is a form of detachment. Yeah, that's true too. And also it's a form of prioritization.

Because if you give me 100 words, and I give you back 10 words, what is that? I'm giving you the priority words. That you received. Yeah, exactly. And are they correct. Yeah.

Those are all good points, learning all the time. Yeah. So yeah, what's the new website say it one more time? Europe. That combat ready. Dot E.E. Okay.

Cool. You can find us from the internet. Yeah, I'm sure. True. Echo Charles, do you have any questions? Yeah, one question. What's the most he ever won in a single poker game?

I won like 15,000 euros. What's the euros to dollars? Same. Yeah, yeah, that's what I figured. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And it was like 200,000 croons. Did you walk away?

So what I did, it was, that was like in, I was, I don't know, 18. Oh, damn. And that's what I won. And what I did with that. money of course nothing used for i i think i think i was i think i think i won like 2,700 bucks in uh tahoe and walked away like a boss and had like a kick ass weekend i was 22 years old like let's go i mean how much money that was like a month's worth of pay bro that's a lot back in the day and i was like i walked away like a boss you look you're sure you

don't want to play one more hand like no dude i'm out the funniest way how i won it was like uh like uh like Usually, like, you should be like super concentrated, right? So what I was doing is that I had won a satellite ticket, I don't know, for 10 bucks. The buy-in was 100 or something. So it was like a thousand people tournament. So I had this setup. On laptop, I had two and a half men running the Diff series. On this screen, it was America's Army.

I was playing that game. And then in this corner, I had the poker at like table open. So I was actually like doing four things at the same time. And I drink Jim Beam at the same time. So in the end of like, I don't know, five hours, like, okay, now there's only 25 people left. I recognize that. So then I said, okay, now, sorry American Army friends.

I now have to go and concentrate on winning some money. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, yeah, I have been playing poker at the same time. So I'm here like, I already have 1,000. And I have a possibility to win like 25. but I eventually got second place. And they were like, what? And they're like, yeah.

So yeah, you can download that app into your computer. And as we are already having communication, I can start commenting you what I'm doing on that poker table. And I think that was the only thing that saved me because I had drank a lot already. So now I had to pretty much go every move and teach them, which made me cautious, disciplined, and eventually I got second place.

I got some money and I continued the poor lifestyle. There you go. Anything else, Ikel Charles? Any other questions? No, no, that's it. Really good stuff. All right. Remo, any final thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, just, yeah, thank you for writing those things. Thank you for living those principles. Because if you didn't, like none of this would have worked. So thank you for telling me what to do in your book. So, yeah, I mean, it's been. awesome right and we're gonna continue doing that we will leave or we will yeah I'm just 35 so for the next 30 years we will conquer Europe that's what I like to hear man freaking outstanding well thanks for joining us thanks for sharing your lessons learned obviously

thanks for your service and and thanks to your countrymen for their service supporting our allied troops and fighting alongside us and thanks for what you're doing today you know taking these principles, you know, you were in a cush job and you took a risk and you are now making this happen. You're going to help kids. You're going to help parents. You're going to help adults. You're going to help Estonia. You're going to help Europe. Absolutely. Outstanding. Keep getting after it, man. And with that, Ramo has left the building. Good to have some Estonian special operations forces in the building. Yep. I agree. There was a quick segment where he, he was talking about he gave a brief before before they started combat combat ready he gave a brief

and he was like he was like hey that was the guy who maybe the client the guy who was giving the brief four he was like hey that was really good and he was like oh i don't know what i said but cool you know remember that part yeah yeah yeah i here's what i think here's what i suspect i think he knew what he said he's being funny and kind of humble i think he knew what he said i think he was just surprised that he was just like hey i just said what i thought i thought I knew, you know, which is nothing. You know, when you compare to like, you know, and the real experts roll up and they're using jargon.

They're doing the whole thing, the atrics and the big words and the cool stuff, right? Yeah. And it sounds good. But I think we all got, get used to that after a while, right? Where it sounds good, but it's like, man, I don't know, man. I should have took more notes maybe. I don't know, you know, kind of a thing. But cool, it sounded good.

And then when you get someone who just delivers it super simple and subsequently easy to understand you're like pro that was freaking great like I remember everything you said and it was so groundbreaking because it all landed on my brain you know so now I know and another component there is he's given it was his first keynote in English so what does that make you do simplify yeah you see look at you yeah man I noticed yeah is a short brief but everything's really simple clear and concise you know landing you know not using any big words but using the good words that actually work yeah and the thing that he mentioned quite a few times which is awesome is like well the content is it's the truth you know as I said in that thing the other day it's like oh why is the

book extreme ownership popular it's because it's the truth yeah people read it and they go yeah you know they're like it's kind of indisputable and it's written in a way that people understand it go yeah I can understand this brad it's so true because let's face it there are and there's a lot of books and just speeches and keynotes and, you know, experts with opinions who instead of just sheer like undisputable truth, they'll say like real inflammatory things that have some level of truth, but there's just a lot more too. But they like to say it really inflammatory for the attention, you know, that front end, the front end attention kind of a thing. But then, yeah, a lot of times it doesn't last. Or you build a reputation for just saying inflammatory

things that have like many levels and areas or areas of dispensual. Bute, we'll say. And then, yeah, it doesn't tend to last, I think. I like it. And you know, speaking of inflammatory, sure. We want inflammation to go down. We don't like inflammation. A lot of that is based on like what you're putting into your body.

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you're gonna hold onto your old one. I get it, right? It has a place in your, you know, in your life or whatever, but let's face it. What,

you don't have an origin belt? Good point. All right. Maybe we have to get Hannah a purple belchy, but she got Seth's purple belts. Yeah, she got that special one too. Yeah, yeah.

But multiple belts is nothing wrong with that. Oh. You seem saying, though. I've never really kind of walk down that road before. You don't just collect. like belts and I know that people do do that but I've not done that I have had one belt per rank yeah yeah me too not I'm thinking of it but not anymore and I somehow I don't have them anymore

my blue belt was awesome because I had it for so long yeah and I had done like old rigor type stuff for it with the sewing machine I sewed the black stripe on there and like you know like I sewed it on myself and it was like mega durable infantry quality but if you need a belt OriginUSA.com. Go get some. How can you not? It's true. Also, Jocka the store called Jocco store.

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you know how you're setting things up for the socks. What do they say on them? Release. Discipline equals freedom. Would it be weird to like a person like me to wear those socks? No. In fact, And I designed and created those socks with you in my mind

Because you have those lame brain Fricking socks that you wear. So if I give you these, actually you can't wear them from working out for working out. I guess you could if you want. But it would be a waste? But that's not what they're for. What are they for?

Looking good and freaking representing. Is you what I'm saying? You know, sometimes that they're not looking good and representing on the in the in the squat rack. No, we are there for sure, but head to toe. I'm talking about from head to toe. Look, you're doing great. Are we not doing that?

We not got some origin RTF on. What socks? No. Okay, upper body. Okay, okay. Lower body. You're doing good from head down to the waist or shorts or whatever. But yeah, the toe part, you're not representing, proud.

You're looking, you're looking, put it that way. Anyway, so, but we have some socks. They're coming. They'll be in time for Christmas. The holidays, the whole deal. The whole deal. It's going to be ready. All right.

So you're saying, anyway, drop store. Also short locker, subscription. You making a cool one for Christmas? I got some ideas I need to talk. too about okay good yeah jocco's creativity now the last new design every month boom sign up subscription scenario it's called the shirt locker it is on jocco store.com check it out check it out also primal beef.com and colorado craftbeef.com we're making the best steak in the country delivered to your door if you need steak if you need ground beef if you need meat sticks go check

it out primobeefe.com, Coloradocraftbeef.com, freaking outstanding people, outstanding companies, outstanding steak, let's go. Subscribe to the podcast, also subscribe to Jockle Underground, also subscribe to our YouTube channels. Check out Flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, baking cool stuff to hang on your wall. We got a bunch of books. I've written them. I've written a bunch of books for some reason. You heard about one today, Extreme Ownership. I wrote another one called Leadership Strategy and Tactics. I wrote another one called Final Spin. I wrote another one called dichotomy leadership. I wrote a bunch of kids books, including one that is available in the Estonian language very soon. So check all those out. You know where to find them. Speaking of Eschelon

Front, you heard a lot about it today. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Eshlamfront.com for details on that. Also, we have an online training academy, which we received amazing feedback from Ramo. Unsolicited feedback just to tighten things up, you know, just poured into us with value. He felt bad about that. He brought it up a few times. I honestly never saw him. And I'm sure it was good feedback.

And it probably got implemented. Yeah. Like probably someone on the front lines was like, oh, cool. We'll make that different font or whatever. Yeah. No, because I don't know what they were saying, but. Yeah, fully. But you're the thing in which I think he was kind of eluding to kind of hardcore.

That it's kind of what you say where it's like, Brian, you can remember that one. I think he's episode, I'm pretty sure it's 184, maybe one. Either way, we're talking about how like it information, feedback, a plan or whatever. When you're trying to convey a message, you can't just beam it. You can't shove it down the throw. You got to be like a quarterback. Remember my quarterback, my quarterback friend, Tim Carey, where he was perfect. This other guy, he would just jam it to show everyone how freaking hard he'd fast he can throw.

He's jamming us up, hurting our fingers and everything. Tim Carey, he loved. He doesn't love it. He loves it. He puts it perfectly. Wherever you are, that's where he hits. Is it getting picked off because he's throwing a little bit more gentle? No, no, no.

See, that's all part of the deletion. That's all part of the delivery. He knows when he has to beam it 100% or gun it or whatever. So I'm saying. But anyway, I think that's what. Beam is a funny word, isn't it? It's like back in the day when you were a little kid, like, I got beamed. Beamed.

Beamed. Dodgeball. It's true. It's like a word. Yeah. It's funny. You caught yourself. You like beam or through, but you kind of like we're trying to, it may have fallen out

of parlance of our time, right? Yeah. We're now it's like people don't say beam anymore, but we're bringing it back. Oh, big time. Well, in football, you'd say beat like if, let's say, um, it'd be more like like a funny clown scenario let's say the receiver ran the wrong route and you beam him right and you throw it to him like you gun it to him and it just hits him in the back or the shoulder he looks too late and it hits him in the head or whatever it's like yeah it's like you got beans so it's still a football thing well yeah big time but gunning it means like I'd freaking zipped it as hard as I can sometimes it's appropriate but sometimes it's not can't just be gunning in freaking criticism for the academy seems I think that he felt like he might have been doing that like after the fact you know that's what I think yeah that's what I think yeah yeah Yeah, he felt like he beamed it. Beamed like too much of it.

Gunned it, beamed it, the whole deal. Hey, I'm real hard to offend. We didn't take a lot more than that. But anyways, what they gave us critique for, which we completely took on board and modified stuff, the Academy. Extremeownership.com, go check it out. And that's all part of Eshlonfront.

You heard these principles that we talked about today. They help so many companies, so many people. Go to Escalonfront.com, check it out. Go to Extremeownership.com, check it out. We're here. We got these lessons. We learned them. We captured. We want to pass them on to you. We want your life and your team and your family to be in a better situation. So go check them out. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And also don't forget about heroes and horses.org. That's where Micah Fink is bringing our veterans up into the mountains to relocate. their soul and he's doing a great job so check that one out and also Jimmy May has got an amazing

organization beyond the brotherhood.org check that out he's helping seals transition out of the military and into the civilian sector and doing a great job if you want to connect with us on the inner webs rewind and listen to whatever that website is that they said for combat ready also Instagram Facebook LinkedIn YouTube combat ready E E at combat ready E.E. The website is Europe.combatready.e. Okay, there you go. Thank you.

I did you take that note. Thank you, bro. Look at you. Cover and move. Got you. Cover and move. And Remo is Ramo Oiaste. It's R-E-M-O-O-J-A-S-T-E.

For us, I'm at jaco.com. All the stuff's there. Jocko.com. Also on social media. I'm at jocco willing echoes out echo Charles just be careful when you go on there you don't want to have your entire life and freaking disappear without even thinking about it while you scroll while you doom scroll right on and thanks once again to Ramo ohesta or yes for everything you did in the past your past service and your continued service helping people

become better leaders and better humans in business and life. And thanks to all the military around the world, especially our allies and a solemn salute to our Estonian brothers. Thank you for the sacrifices you made to defend freedom around the globe. Also here at home, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all other first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe.

And to everyone else. out there. Like Ramo Oyasta says, like combat ready teaches, use the principles. Use the principles. They're free. It's no big secret. They're free. You have to pay anything for them. You just listen to them right now. Cover and move simple. Prioritize next to you, decentralized command. Use them. Be default aggressive. Take extreme ownership. There you go. They work. Use them. And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jock. out