Jocko Podcast - 468: Some Lessons Only Life Can Teach. With Sean Glass.

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

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

This is Jocko podcast number 468 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Also joining us tonight, Sean Glass. What's up, Jocco? Echo. Yeah, there you go. Sean's a former SEAL officer, fought on Iraq and Afghanistan, got out of the Navy,

went into a leadership position at a startup, eventually joined us in a national upfront as leadership instructor. It's where he works now. He's worked with scores of companies in every imaginable industry. He's also a husband. Father has a small friend. Farm. What do they call that?

Like a hobby farm? Is yours bigger than a hobby farm? I mean, it's 60 acres. I don't know if you'd call that a hobby farm. I mean, it's not, you know, it's in Virginia. So if I was to say 60 acres in Montana, it's a hobby farm. 60 acres in Virginia, you know, it's, you know, small, but it's still decent. Okay, okay.

I think I graduated from hobby to small farm. Okay. So he has a small farm in the Shenandoah Valley. He has a little company called Primal Beef. and he's been on the podcast before. He's been on episode 404. So if you want to hear his origin story, go back and listen to episode 404.

But we're going to talk about some of his experiences and lessons learned that we didn't discuss the first time that he was on. And that's because we're always learning. We're always reflecting. And let's talk about what you've learned in the past couple years. You know, that's a thing is when you start to work at Eshlam Front,

people working there, We talk about leadership all the time, and we hear stories of leadership all the time, and we're watching leadership inside of companies all the time. And so we're constantly like a doctor, you know, what is it when a doctor thinks they have diseases, or they're constantly checking and like a psychologist thinks they have these crazy diseases or thinks they have these mental problems. So when you're working onussela on front, you're constantly reviewing your whole life. and every leadership call that you ever made

and it can be humbling to look at your mistakes and you also go, oh yeah, did that one pretty good but I messed this one up. So you've been going through that process for a few years now. So awesome, man, let's get into it. You got in your first platoon, got done with Budge, you got your first platoon. Wasn't there something that went down at land warfare?

Some chemlight scenario that happened? What was that all about? Yeah. So, you know, new guy tour, he's an officer. It's a new guy tour. So you're trying to prove yourself at all times. Land Warfare was our first real block of training, which, as you know, and Echo probably knows now as well sitting in that seat for as long as he has, that that's kind of like the proving

ground for the SEAL teams is land warfare. That's where, you know, bread and butter, all the hard work. That's where the platoon comes together or doesn't come together sometimes. But that's where I think your character is tested more than any other place. Super hard training, long hours. You know, I went through. It was always a summertime when I went through. So it's what, average day out in Nileans, like 115, something like that.

So, you know, first time to prove myself, you know, I'm doing pretty solid. Training's progressing. We get to right about the portion where we're going to start doing the field training exercise. And what are you a squad leader at the squad commander? And a squad commander. Yeah, we changed the firm. Only the SEAL teams could do that. Change that.

Only the SEAL teams would change. Which means like you're in charge of eight people, but you're not really in charge of eight people. That's, that's classic. Did you have, so did you have two junior officers and one platoon commander? So it was myself, Rob Birch, who's about to retire after doing 20, prior enlisted guy, total stud. I'm actually linking up with him tonight to hang out a bit. Total stud. One of those guys that's like just good at everything he does.

And then platoon commander, the chief. So, yeah, because back in the day, there was only two officers in the platoon commander and then an assistant platoon commander. And then at this juncture, because the SEAL teams has always got some kind of new flavor going on. So at this point in the SEAL teams, it was, all right, you're going to. to have one officer and then each squad is going to have its own leader. Correct. No, or no, commander.

Commander. Okay. So you're a squad commander. Yeah. Bro, this guy was in charge of seven other dudes and he's getting called commander. Okay. Hey, we'll go with it, dude. All right.

So you're a squad commander and what's going down? So you're getting towards the point of training we're going to do the FTXs, which is, you know, put everything together. So it's simulated real world operation. All of our training is iterative. So they're building blocks. We've been doing patrolling. We've been doing iads.

We've been doing reactive contact drills. And now you're starting to put things together. So before the first FTCS, you do some raids practicals. And just think of a raid for those listening as it's the actions on. So it's not getting you to the target. You're at the target. You're setting up positions to take the target down. And then it's basically the actions that you would take to take the target down.

So typically what happens is there's two good formations to take. to conduct a raid. Either everybody's online or you set that L. The reason being is obviously you want to make sure that you know where all your people are and you want to make sure that there's no potential fracture site out there. So online minimizes that and then an L also minimizes that but you've got to have some control measures in place with that L because you've got what's called a base of fire and then a maneuver. So my element is the maneuver element. The sister platoon, so our other platoon that we were going through training with 18 seals, they're the base element. The base element are the guys that

are going to just be hammering the target with heavy machine gun fire, probably some Mark 40, so 40 mic stuff like that, but they're just softening the target for a long period of time. And then after a certain period of time, then the maneuver element gets up and you start to push through, but right as you get up, the base element is still providing that cover fire. At some point in time, the base element has to do what we call shift fire. which means now they're still shooting because when I'm shooting, bad guys keep their heads down, but they're not shooting potentially directly at the target. They're shifting their fire at a 45 degree angle to create some space for the base element to come in.

For the assault element to come in. And then at a certain point of time, the assault element has to signal to check fire. And check fire is when you're close enough to the target where it's now unsafe. The assault element takes over the assault. the base element has to stop shooting to keep everything safe. So perfect world, that's what happens. So I am a commander, so I'm given some extra responsibilities by my platoon chief, and I'm what's called the Hinge Man.

So I am the guy in the assault element that has to signal to the base element when it's time to shift their fire, and then when it's time to check the fire. So that's, you know, a big responsibility for me. Again, always looking to prove myself super fired up. So how we do this, at least at the time, was we had what's called a Kimlight bundle. So imagine a bunch of little Kim lights, you tape them together, you throw them in the air. It's a visible cue for the base to say, okay, there's the Kim Light bundle. That's our cue to shift fire.

The next Kim Light bundle, which is a different color, so the first one we threw out was green. That means shift fire. The next one that I throw out is red, and that's their sign for Checkfire. So the only way that they know how to shift fire and check fire is through that. Now you're thinking, well, comms. Sure, we have comms. But the guy right beside you is lighting up with a Mark 48 belfed machine gun. You can't really hear much of anything.

So this is the two signals. Green Kim Light bundle, red Kim Light bundle. So I've rehearsed it a bunch of times in my mind. I'm going to walk you through what it looked like. And then I'm going to walk you through what actually happened. So we start, base element just. starts hammering it. To that point in time,

it's the coolest thing I've ever seen as a new guy. You're just watching tracers just rip through everything. You've got 18 seals online. 18 seals. That's probably four mark 48s and three 46s.

You're just getting after it. We start making our move. I want to prove myself. I want to show that I'm young and aggressive. I don't want to throw that Kenlight bundle out too soon. So we start walking, walking, 20 yard mark where I'm just watching tracers sit by, Kim like bundle comes out.

Shift fire. We go about another 20 yards. I throw out the red Kimmelite bundle, check fire. We do the raid. It goes great. After action reviewed right there on the scene, the traded instructors come up to us. And they said, hey, that was legit. That was the best raid we've ever seen.

That was the closest we've ever seen anyone allow their squad to get before they shifted fire. that's what we're talking about. That's the aggression we want to see. So I'm feeling pretty solid about myself. There's a guy in our platoon whose nickname is Grinch. He's the senior E6 that's not in a leadership position. He's kind of like the guy that all the E6s look up to, total stud. Very quiet, but he's called the Grinch for a reason. I don't think he's ever said a word to me up to this point, but he comes over to me and kind of gives me a tap in the chest. And he's like, F, yeah, man, that's what I'm talking about. So again, you know, I'm taking that on board, prove myself. At least that's what it looked like to everybody else. What really happened is I take the

Kim Lai bundle and I'm thinking about the best place to store it. I've got two of them. The colors matter. You've got your nods on. You know, you can't really see a whole lot of anything. So, sorry, like, color-wise, once you bring them up, everything just looks like a big glowing bundle. So I'm like, all right, green bundle, the first one I'm going to put right here center mass in my kit kind of in one of my ammo pouches so that way I know right where it is, I can grab it, chunk it. Second one, I attach to my hip with a little cord that I can just pop off and chunk it. So we're marching. I do want to prove myself, so I want to get close.

So I don't even start messing with the Kim Light bundle until we're probably about 50 yards away. And then I go to grab the Kim Light bundle, and I can't get it out. I don't know what it was caught on, but it was caught on something. And I'm walking. I'm making sure that the whole platoon's online. We're walking. I'm trying to yank out. I'm trying to yank it out.

I can't get it out. I can't get it out. There's something that I could do to stop and just make sure that no one gets hurt. And that's to yell ceasefire. There's no way in hell as a new guy. I'm yelling ceasefire on a range where my chief gave me the responsibility of being the hinge man in front of the sister platoon in front of all the trainers. So I'm like, you know, freaking out at this point because I'm thinking there's no other way.

I'm going to have to yell ceasefire. And then I'm just going to get called out. You know, my reputation is going to be ruined forever. for screwing this up. I'm yanking. I can't get it out. I don't know what it's caught on. I can't see anything with my nods on.

So I just, you know, grab my knife out of my pocket and I'm just slashing everything that I can possibly slash on my kit to try to get it to break free. And it eventually breaks free. I'm like, the second it's free, I just chunk it up, shift fire.

Then, you know, the other one was easy to get off, check fire. So I don't think I've ever told anybody in my platoon that story before, but I went from, You know, too, I didn't say anything anybody, of course. I took the credit to everybody was giving me. But it was up to that point, the scariest I've ever been in the SEAL teams,

because I'm like, I'm either going to have to call ceasefire, which you know how that makes me look, or I'm going to get my squad killed by walking to this line of fire. So I got some kudos for it. They probably weren't deserved, but at the time, you know, a win was a win. And so I took it. Just so everyone knows, there's art range safety officers that would have blown the whistle. He was right beside me. Yeah, he's right beside you.

He's probably watching your dumb ass. He's probably the only person that was laughing. He probably owned that guy a beer. And there's range safety officer with the base element. They're on nods. They can see where everyone's going. So there is some control. There is a lot of control in those live fire revolutions.

But that is, it's interesting that you would rather die. He didn't look like a wimp out there, which is very common. Tony Afratti, BTF Tony is horrified of heights, like horrified of heights. like horrified of heights and he was I think he was in Hong Kong or something and they were rappelling they were doing like a thousand foot repel like off of a of a of a you know 50 or 80 or 100 story building yeah and he said he was just like absolutely horrified but he would just rather die he was like I truly believed I was going to die and I was like okay I'm just going to die it's going to do this thing and so you you're in your first platoon and it sounds like and you were

telling me earlier about like a little bit of arrogance, little cockiness that you had. Yeah. How'd that work out for you? Yeah. I don't know. Like if you were to, if you were an outside observer, you would probably have said definitely there's some ego there as far as just how I carried myself. I don't think I really treated really anybody ever disrespectfully or anything like that.

But I was pretty good as for a new guy. My chief gave me a lot of faith, allowed me to run a lot of things during training. My platoon commander did the same thing. So, you know, I was a good shot. I was in good shape. I was making good calls. I had the, at least I think I had the respect to the guys in my platoon. And I let some of that get to me as far as my ego.

And my platoon chief was always a guy that was going to be in my corner, was always going to encourage me, but also a guy that's going to let you know, you know, if you're stepping out of line. This is Dave, right? Yeah, this is Dave. Yeah. So, you know, we get through work. up and I know he sees it. We've had some, some conversations where he's, you know, made me aware of it. But nothing, you know, nothing that's going to. No hanging offenses. No hanging offenses.

Nothing like that. Just like, hey, things to be cognizant of. So we get through training. We deploy 11 months in Afghanistan. Again, I got to run a whole lot of stuff. I'm working with different units. I'm running different operations. So the confidence in cocky level are probably starting to blur a little bit. So I find out on that tour that I'm going to get to go and do my platoon commander tour next, which is not normal at the time. Usually as a new guy officer, you've got to go and do your new guy tour and then you go do what's called the disassociated tour where you're going to go some other command that's probably not necessarily in the seals. Maybe it's a boat team, maybe it's administrative or an operational position and a staff. But the theory is you get a breath

of experience. You see something else. You get a little bit more seniority and then you come back and do your platoon commander tour. I was fortunate enough to go right from my squad commander to my platoon commander. So I'm sure this was Dave's way of telling me you've got a couple things you need to work on as you're getting prepared to step into this platoon commander role. Because as a squad commander with a platoon commander and a platoon chief there to kind of keep me in check a little bit, but also you know, there was some mistakes that I made overseas, probably from overconfidence, cockiness, and they, you know, they helped me out with it. So I think he was his way of saying, give me an example of a mistake. Working with different partner units, probably trying

to take a little bit too much charge of stuff, and then getting, they'd get some phone calls about stuff. And then instead of being like, hey, man, what the heck, they just like, hey, let's talk through this. You know, think about it from their perspective. They've been here for X amount of months, you know, you roll up. And I'm not, again, I'm not treating people person to person bad, but it was just kind of this thing of, hey, we're the SEAL teams here. You know, you guys are supporting us. This is what we need, that type of thing. You're a little bit of that guy. A little bit of that guy. Yeah, from time to time, a little bit of that guy. So we're deployments over with. We were very north in Afghanistan, like very northern Afghanistan. The biggest base, our home base

was Missouri Sharif, which is in northern Afghanistan. It's a big air base. But we were 350 miles north of that. But that's where we have to go to redeploy. So we go down there. You were doing VSO, right? VSO. Yeah, the village stability operations piece, which was great time. And we come back there to redeploy. We end up having to stay there for two weeks because the bird got delayed. So we have time. And there's Missouri Sharif is a big, big air strip. And then you've got the American side on one side of the air strip. And then you had a German side on the other side. American side, you know, was a total dump. Nothing was improved.

Nothing was, you know, it was just gravel floors, basically. The Germans, I don't know if they inherited this base or they just built it up, but it was a nice base. It had restaurants. It had all kinds of other stuff. So almost once a day, we'd all go across to the German side, get some food. We were on one of these trips. It was him, myself, and two of the older guys in the truck, drive a little bit to get some food. Dave.

Dave, Dave, my platoon chief. In the truck with me, he's driving. I'm sitting there. you know, you're spent 11 months together deployed, and then 18 months training before that, you've talked about literally everything you could talk about at this point in time. So we were talking about superhero

because I think like the first run of Marvel movies had just started to come out, and we had watched some at the base. So Dave's like, hey, if you could be any superhero, what would you be? And I instantly, I was like, Batman. Because I've always, you know, Batman's awesome. I'm always going to be Batman.

And he doesn't even look at me. He just says, you couldn't be Batman. I'm like, well, why not? And he goes, Batman wears a mask. And you would need people to know who was doing the heroic deeds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That was a gut punch. I think it was a very well-deserved gut punch. But to me, that was his way of just politely giving me a little thump upside the head and set me up a success saying, you're about to be a platoon commander and you've got some things that you have to work on.

Like it was a privilege to be given the platoon commander's spot, which he knows. So I think he was just telling me, check yourself before you go into that spot. But I'll tell you what, it probably made more of an impact on me than anything else that he could have said

just based on how he responded to that. Like it got my attention. And I definitely, you know, had a lot to think about and I definitely made a change after that. For sure. One thing I definitely realized, I realized, so you've heard the story of my second platoon where we fired our platoon commander.

We had a mutiny and the great guy, Delta Charlie, came in to take over. What I realized in that platoon was that, and I used to teach this to the young junior officers, you're going to get the, you're going to get the credit. You don't need to make everyone know that you get, because when you're the platoon commander, when a platoon does well, everyone's going to look and go, hey, good job. Like, good job with your platoon. It's your platoon, good job. And when you do bad, everyone's going to look at you and you're going to say, hey, what's wrong with your platoon?

So you can take all those insecurities you have that no one's going to notice how awesome you are. And you can just settle them down because you're de facto the person in charge. You don't need to prove anything. That's the context I used to teach the junior officers. You don't need to prove that you're in charge of anything. You are de facto in charge. You're literally the platoon commander. And so what happens with a platoon?

If it does well, you don't need to tell anyone how awesome you did. If your platoon does well, people know. And it's the same thing with a platoon chief. Like a good platoon chief, everyone knows. Oh, yeah. They give that platoon chief gets a ton of credit because it's his platoon. So, yeah, the officers tend to do that more because the chiefs kind of know that. It's the platoon chief.

But the officers, they haven't been around long enough to be like, oh, I'm just going to get credit. And there's, I don't need to tell anyone that I need credit. Yeah. The thing that even makes it worse is my platoon commander was that guy. They never saw credit for anything. I would watch him actually take ownership for things that was not really on him during training and he would just sit there and just take it. So I had a great example. I had a great example. And I'm making it seem like I was the worst. Like I was not. But I definitely it was there. I remember you were not the worst. You were not at all. You were self-aware enough to at least be. be recognizing this stuff. A lot of people that they don't even recognize what's happening. And that's, you know, like a crazy person doesn't know that they're crazy.

Yeah. A truly egotistical person, they have no comprehension that that's what's going on. And they rationalize it to themselves. Well, I mean, of course, I'm going to be a little bit arrogant. Look at my performance.

You know, they say that. And that's their justification of rationalization. It's not ego if it's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. And then, Didn't you have some Dave again?

I think what I'm having Dave on the podcast. Oh, hell yeah. In the near future. Something happened with SF guys, like some liaison that you had. What was that all about? Yeah. So the village stability operations mission set had been going on since 2009 in Afghanistan. We deployed very, very early 2011, like February of 2011.

So village stability operations was still relatively new for the campaign, but it was very, very new mission set for the SEAL teams because that is not something that the SEAL teams really train heavily to do is that unconventional warfare thing. So it was a new mission set, but Green Berets, in conjunction with their assaults training and things like that, that's their mission set. So when we embedded, we had no real frame of reference for this outside of just lessons learned. So they gave us a liaison who had been doing this for a long time, a Squaredaway Army, I think it was an E7. Won't say his name, but we'll call him Pete.

So Pete is kind of our liaison for these village stability operations. He's been cultivating some of these relationships with the local elders that we're going to need to know. So he's been basically laying the groundwork for us. And are you guys going to do a turnover with him? Or is he going to stay on board? Okay. He was supposed to stay on board. So he, we meet him at Missouri Sharif.

We all convoy up to this place. We embed. And then he's basically. all has these relationships built out. And we kind of fall in onto these relationships. Damn, that's pretty nice that they gave you a guy like that. It's huge. That had been up there.

Yeah, it's huge. I'm sure that... How long had he been on deployment for? Oh, my goodness. He was one of those guys that I don't know that he ever really went home. It was one of those things with the SF guys specifically, they would go back-to-back tours all the time. And Pete really, really loved it.

So I think he was volunteering always to come back. So if I remember correctly, of like the last three or four years, he had probably spent three of them inside Afghanistan. So he'd been there forever. It was him and his terp that had built out. His interpreter was U.S. citizen, but Afghani-born. So they built out all these relationships for us. We embed with him.

We're kind of working with these relationships, building him up for us now. And he's going out with us on all these operations. And he's just, I mean, he's a savage. Like this guy is a total stud, total stud. definitely a little bit of a wild streak in him too. Like he would disappear with his terp every now and then, and they would go into the village, and then they would go a little bit past the village,

and they would go and do some relationship building or something, and then he would come back, and our platoon chief, Dave, would have to kind of like, hey, man, what are you, you said you were going over here, but then you went over there type thing. So he was a super courageous guy, put it that way, like not necessarily worried about his own, his own self-preservation in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan.

I'll give you an example of that. The first response to a firefight. So these different villages, they know we're there. The Taliban know we're there. So we're going and visiting these villages. We start building some relationships, talk to the village elders, hold these key leader engagements,

and then we come back to our base. Well, the Taliban comes then into that village in the next day or two. Sometimes they would just talk with the village elders, and sometimes they would start slapping people around, shooting a couple people, try to prove that they're still in charge type thing. So it was one of those instances where they started to make a ruckus in a neighboring village. We get the call that they're in there, so we respond and we go push out to basically clear them out of this village and protect the local population. So at the time, we had these big up-armored vehicles.

I don't even think that we had our side-by-sides there yet up and running. So we have these big, they're called Matt Vs. Imagine even larger than a Humvee. They're big off-road vehicles. and they're basically like wheeled tanks, super capable. That's what we go out on. Pete has got a Iranian-made motorcycle called a Pamir, and he's riding on this Iranian-made motorcycle next to us,

actually in front of us as like the vanguard guiding us to this village that we need to go to. So en route to this village, we're probably about 100 meters away from this village. My vehicle was the lead vehicle at the time, besides Pete leading the charge on his Premier motorcycle. And our vehicle just starts getting pinged with all these different incoming rounds. And I see Pete just kind of, no joke,

dump the bike, jump up, dive behind a berm and just start getting after it. Talking to him afterwards, he's like rounds were just snapping all by him on his little motorcycle and he just dove off into an ditch and started getting after it. He was good, dude. Like, he was an awesome SF guy.

as we were there for a little bit longer, we started to realize that he also had some issues that probably came from being in theater for too long. He was going, in that mission set, you got to go a little bit indige, a little bit indigenous, because you're living with him. I think Pete went full, full indage.

And we started to get the feeling that some of the times that he would go into these different villages, he would take his turp and he would come back and he would be pretty heavily inebriated. So again, Dave's such a good guy. He really likes Pete, and Pete is a stud. So he's trying to look out for him, and he's talking to him, and he's saying, you know, you can't be doing all that nonsense.

And Pete just doesn't take it on board, and it kind of came to a head one night where we have our base is in the village, and then there's two pieces of terrain to the right and the left, and we had our observation post with the heavy machine guns, the grenade launchers, all that stuff up there. So one of our new guys, Chris, a new guy with me, radios in and says, hey, there's machine gun fire going on in the Wadi. It's the middle of the night.

It's like 12 o'clock at night. So good on Chris because he could have just lit that position up with the 50 cow, but he had enough S-A to go, that's a little bit out of the ordinary. It's not being directed at us. So he calls back down to Chief. Chief rallies everybody. We go, we clear through the Wadi, and we find out it's Pete and his turp, and they're just hammered. hammered and they're just clacking off rounds in the middle of nowhere and luckily as we were clearing up there uh we realized what was going on and no one took any shots when they were shooting

everything so get them bring them back to our base they're definitely hammered and they're sitting on a bench and dave's talking to him and dave is now i mean you know dave he's calm until he needs to not be calm and he's starting to get worked up now because they've had this conversation multiple times. And he's telling them, you know, you can't be doing that. You put everybody at risk. You put yourself at risk. You're damaging the relationship that we have here that we're trying to build out with

these village elders by, you know, cracking off your machine guns in the middle of the wide in the middle of the night. And Pete doesn't like the conversation too much. And he gets up and he goes and attempts to take a swing at Dave. And Dave just drops him with a straight right. Dave's, how tall is Dave? Six, six. Yeah.

And he was like a boxer growing up. Yeah. And he's a jitjit. two player. So he knows how to scrap. Yeah. Dave, it's hard.

Yeah. Dave, it's very hard. Yeah. And he, so he took, the dude takes what, and the dude's drunk.

Dude's drunk. And he takes a swing. Takes a swing at Dave. Dave just rocks back. And then as he's coming back, boom, straight right. He's out cold. Like timber.

Out cold. His turp, who's also inebriated, stands up. And I just kind of shoved him back down on the bench. And he was so gone. He wasn't. to do anything else.

Dude, I wish it was the two-piece right. I wish he cracked that's terp too. The turp, I think, saw what happened and felt like he probably needed to do something and then realized it wasn't prudent to do that. So Pete's just laid out now, and we're all just kind of sitting here like, you know, Dave just dropped Pete justifiably just dropped Pete, probably for his own good. And Pete and Dave both East. sevens at this job.

Both E-7s, yeah. And, hey, during the daytime, like, they're all good. They're all good, all good. But you get alcohol involved or Afghani wine or whatever it was and, you know, things escalated. But that night, Dave, after he knocks him out, grabs him, drags him, and puts him in a a con X box and locks the connex box. And he didn't do it because he was concerned about Pete.

He did it because all of his Z-6s just watched Pete try to take a swing at Chief. And he was very concerned about when he was. went to bed what would happen to Pete. So he puts Pete in the connex box and he puts one of the new guys or two of the new guys on watch. Pete wakes up the next morning. You know, he's definitely got a hangover and a shore jaw, but it's all good. But, you know, the real lesson here is, for me, at least, was Dave could have ruined Pete's career. He could have called back and just said, hey, this guy's liability. He's insane. He's doing all these things that he shouldn't be doing. You know, you need to fire this dude.

You need to take care of him. But that's not what he did. He called up the Sergeant Major that we were all working for, SF Sergeant Major, that we were in their battle space. The Sergeant Major was awesome. He was an ex-cad guy. He was about Dave's height, 6-8, but big, big country boy. Last name was Smith.

And he calls him up and he just tells him, he's like, hey, Pete needs to go home and he needs some time at home to, you know, take a breather. And I think Smith was also savvy enough to not ask too many. questions and Dave just goes he's he's good dude he just needs to go home and and take a knee for a little bit Smith didn't ask any questions besides that he took Pete back spent some time with him there at the command and then and then brought him back home sent him back home on a bird and I think got Pete some some much needed R and R and clear his headspace but because of the way that Dave dealt with that problem with the sergeant major because he didn't try to make a big deal out of it

because he looked out for his guy, because he realized Pete was a legitimately good dude who had just probably been over there for a lot longer than he should have been over there. That Sergeant Major loved our platoon. There was not one thing that we asked for that tour that we did not get. And I think the vast majority of the reason was because of how Dave handled that situation and how he didn't try to throw Pete under the bus about how he just tried to take care of a fellow fellow soldier who needed, you know, maybe a little bit of outside encouragement

to go take care of himself. Yeah, that's a legit. That's a legit example of the escalation of counseling as well. He's telling me, he can't be doing this. You can't be doing this. Oh, you're swinging me. You're getting dropped. No, that's great stuff.

And there's always, you know, we could probably spend hours of you explaining because when you're working with someone and you're seeing that you're doing a bunch of positive things and you're seeing that they're a good soldier and they're, but they have, obviously they have this issue that they got to deal with. And do we want to burn someone and ruin their career,

even though they're a good person, they have an issue, right? So that's one of those decisions you can make. Now, there's other times where you, well, clearly, people do things where you're like, oh, yeah, you're done. Yep. And you're going home or whatever the case may be. And you're going home. And I'm reporting everything that you just did,

and I'm going to do everything I can to burn your career. That happens too. But realizing that there's a whole gray area and you as a leader have to figure out, well, in this case, Dave as a leader, figure out how he's going to handle this. And clearly, you know, he probably could have called the Sergeant Major and said, hey, you know,

what's this guy been like? What's Pete like? Because, and the Sergeant Major could be, oh, he was a problem. That's why we sent him up there with you guys. Oh, okay. Because guess what? He's a real problem.

The Sergeant Major was probably like, hey, you know, he had some issues at home. He wanted to stay on deployment. But yeah, he's dealing with some stuff. And like, okay, cool. Guess what? You know, he needs some help. He needs a little breather.

So, good relationship up and down the chain of command. Awesome. So you end up rolling from that platoon right into your next platoon. Yeah. And now you're a platoon commander, which I'll, again. A little more credit. Yeah. Yeah.

Again, in the SEAL teams, you know, we call it a platoon commander when it's a real stretch of the word. Because you're, and when you got in this troop, now you get, into a little bit, you have a little bit of a frictional relationship. But when you roll in, you tell me about this, this is when guys started getting their tridents straight out of SQT. Did you get your trinette straight out of SQT? I did. Okay. And how did you get handled when you got to the team? Because Dave was there, I got handled like a seal. There was no games. There was no removing the trident until you earned it for the platoon type thing,

which is something that, you know, I'm sure still happens every now and then. Okay, so echo Charles. Back in the day, back in the day we used to graduate Buds and you didn't get your trident. You trident is the thing that, like, you wear on your chest means your seal. And so when I graduate Buds, you didn't get a trident. You just showed up to the seal team. And you showed up to the seal team and you had, you went through STT, SEAL tactical training, which was run by the SEAL team.

and the SEAL team put you through that training. It was a couple months long. And when you got done with that, you had, actually I don't know how long it was, probably three months or something like that. It definitely wasn't six months. So when you got done with that, you had to study and you had an oral board

where you had, like, they'd put, like, every weapon in the armory, every type of weapon in the army into a poncho and shake it up and they'd throw it out on the floor and you have to put all the weapons together. They'd give you all these, like, dive physics.

problems and have to assemble a rig, a dive rig and work on the radios and call nine, they just gave you a bunch of stuff. You had to do it. And when you were done, you were either approved or you were not approved, but pretty much everyone would, you know, most people, unless they were idiots, would get their trident. So later, they made that training go to one centralized location. and at Naval Special Warfare Center. So now it was Buds, you went to Buds,

and you went straight into SQT. Now it was called SEAL qualification training. That was now six. Was your SQT six months long? Seven months, yeah. Because they added the jump at the end. So six months, then jump, so seven months. So you're like qualified.

But they also ended up giving you your trident at the end of that. Well, you weren't at a SEAL team yet. They'd give you a triadent. Now you'd show up at a SEAL team. You already had your trident. So some of the, get some of the boys.

Sure. Some of the mafia, they didn't like that. They said, wait, you, you don't, you don't just give a guy a trident.

He's not even in a platoon. How can you get a trident in you and not in a platoon? So they did all kinds of little things. One of them was, so in, in the military, if you have an inert training device, like an inert weapon,

it'll be blue or an inert, like RPG will be blue or an inert grenade is blue. So they would take their tritens and paint them blue, meaning like inert. They also had put them in, I've heard of them being put in, in a bird cage because you call your trident your bird. They would take the tridents and put them in the bird cage.

And until they deem, until the platoon deemed that you deserve to have a trident, your, your bird is in the bird cage. I've heard of being in freaking fish tanks. Like they've done all kinds of stuff. And different, you know, and some people were like Dave, like, you know, Hey, that's, you're fine.

Actually, I didn't really think about this. In Task Unit Bruiser, we didn't do anything like that. It was just like the guy showed up and they were, we didn't think about their Tridentz too much. We treat them like new guys. And you talked to guys, some of my buddies had that done to them. And they didn't look at it like it was, they have fond memories of it now.

It's like, hey, it was our platoon's way of saying, you know, welcome to the platoon type thing. So some of them have fond memories of that stuff, the bird cage. So what was the deal with you guys? Do you guys have the blue tridents? Blue Trident's and on pink patches. So we show up to our first pre-training event. So the real six months of training, unit level training.

You go through about a month of what we call pre-unit-level training, which is basically you're doing shakeout patrols. You're getting some time on the range, getting your weapons all doped in, maybe doing two-man entries and four-man entries, one-room entries, just basically doing what you need to do so that when you show up to day one of the actual training, you're ready to train and you don't have to spend hours doping in weapons and all that other stuff. So we're at our pre-ULT assaults training where we do our assaults. And first day, everyone puts their gear away.

You know, they're getting stuff ready for the killhouse and for the range. And I'm sitting in that space. And one of my new guys comes walking by and he's got a pink patch on his arm, like a fluorescent pink patch, huge, with a blue inert trident in it. and I called him over and I said, hey, what's up of that patch? And he goes, oh, all the, all the new guys are wearing them. He just said pride. Yeah. Real sheepishly, he's like, hey, all the new guys are wearing them.

And I'm thinking, in my platoon, I'm like, well, all the new guys? And he's like, yeah, in the whole troop, three platoons. I said, well, who told you to wear that? And he goes, where the LPO's gave him out and told us all to wear them. And I'm very calm having this conversation with, but I'm just boiling on the inside for several different reasons. So call my LPO over. Who's absolute stud?

Like, awesome guy. And I just asked him, hey, what's the deal with these? And he goes, hey, the other LPO's wanted to do it. And, you know, I didn't want to be the guy that says, no, I don't, you know, don't see what the big deal is about it. So, you know, they're all wearing them. Why was your blood boiling? primarily for me, there's a lot of seals with really good reputations that gave their stamp of approval to those guys to have their Trident.

So I was upset, one, because I think also as a grown man and a seal, you should not be wearing a pink patch with the blue Trident on it. That was the primary reason. The secondary reason was because of kind of the message it sends. I'm like, well, you know, there's a lot of guys. and Dave was my first platoon chief, who I looked up very highly to, he was one of my buds instructors. So I know he was probably had a couple of these guys

that were probably he put through as well. So I'm thinking, so Dave says they're good. All these other master chiefs at SQT say they're good, and now we're saying they're not good. So I was pretty heated, but nothing gets one by being superheeded by not being detached. So I stayed super detached.

I'm like, okay, I'm just going to get the rest of the platoon. leadership, the troop leadership in, and now let's talk about these patches. With the in-state being, I knew my guys weren't going to wear him. I actually told my new guy before he walked away, I said, take that off and go tell every other new guy to take those off. And then I pulled my LPO aside, talked with him. He gave me the backstory. I went and got my chief. We kind of got on the same page. And then I went and talked to the rest of the platoon commanders, platoon chief, and the troop chief, troop commander.

And just said, hey, at first I was trying not to just plant the flag and say, absolutely not. My platoon's not going to do this. I was trying to build a little consensus and maybe so, at least in my perspective, why they shouldn't be rocking those patches. So try to win them over with some discussion. Some of the same points we just talked about, hey, they're grown men. They've earned their Trident.

You know, they shouldn't be walking around with these pink patches on. It's unprofessional. Use the whole thing about, well, you're telling me that we know more. We get more of a say than every E6, every E7, every E8, and every E9 who trained them, selected them, and said they were good to have these patches. So you're saying that their opinions don't really matter. And this is a brief summary of things, but this was like a two to three hour heated conversation. Dang. Only in the SEAL teams can we get this kind of drama going, but we could get it.

I shouldn't say only in the SEAL teams. Like any other organization, we can get our drama on. Yeah. It was basically the one of the platoon chiefs who, one of the other platoons was really planting the flag on it. Like, hey, this is not the officer's territory. This is the enlisted person's territory. And again, I'm not trying to stir things up too much. We're just forming up as a troop.

But I told them, I said, hey, well, when it starts to affect the platoon, my platoon, and like it becomes my territory. And that's when I kind of turned my tactic towards. I don't think I'm going to win them over. I think it's just time to plant the flag. One of the platoon commanders did say, hey, I see your point and I don't think it's the right thing to do.

Troop commander, I think, was trying to be diplomatic about things, and he goes, it's one or nothing. So you guys all get on the same page, or you don't do it or you do it. We're all going to do it or not do it together. And I finally just said, well, we're not doing it. so you guys can do whatever you want. But not the way that I wanted to start off the trip,

but I felt like it was one of those things where for my guys, like I'm not going to let my guys walk around. So what did you guys? Do you guys not do it? Did they address the troop do it? Nope. Nope.

They didn't do it because it was the troop commander and troop chief said, hey, it's either one or none. And as a token, if you will, Steve Ward was the CMC at Team 7 at that time. So I said, to close the discussion out, I said, our platoon is not wearing them. And I looked at our troop chief and I said, if you want to go and ask Steve Ward, if he's okay with these, and he says yes, we'll put him back on. I already knew what Steve was going to say. We get through that training trip, senior chief, who I loved, he was an awesome troop chief, pulls me aside.

And he's like, I went and asked Steve, which my mind was kind of blown that he actually asked Steve in the first place. But he asked Steve and Steve was like Mortified like hell no Hell no you're not going to do that So it was One of those things that maybe doesn't seem like that big of a deal But for me it was a huge deal And I was not going to let my guys go around wearing

A freaking pink patch Yeah with an nerd trident on it Well the patch thing was enough of a thing For Leif and I to write a freak chapter about it in a book Because I had the you know I was a little bit of a different thing But you know guys were just getting crazy with the patches

highly offensive, which is funny when you're out of the desert by yourselves on a seal base around a bunch of frogmen. That's cool. I get it. They're funny. We all having a good time. But, you know, if Marine Corps battalion commander or an army battalion commander sees like some patch, which is vulgar at best, you know, totally offensive at worst, it's like,

that's just not going to fly, man. It's not happening. But yeah, the patch things, it's really, it's really interesting because I actually, I understood and still understand that there is absolutely a value in having material things that represent. Like, we're sitting here talking about the trident. The trident's a real thing. Like somebody made that up. It didn't even exist when the seal started. There wasn't a thing.

They made a thing. They made a thing to signify like, oh, you're a seal. What are the awards that you get? Those are things that you're going to put on your uniform that said you were deployed at this time or you served honorably in this combat situation. These are all things that the military made up and blessed. By the way, we have a flag in America. Why do we have a flag?

And we put an American flag patch on our gear. And those things work. and even in about face, Hackworth, he would give. They had a patch. They had a patch. Little, uh,

hardcore ricondo patch is what it is. We ended up putting on a damn shirt. What up? So those things are real. And there's a, there's a reason. And the, the seal teams went through a whole thing of like,

the platoon patch shouldn't, you shouldn't be loyal to the platoon. You should be loyal to the teams, loyal to the Navy, loyal to the country, right? And so there's some fear that there was like an undermining like this guy's more loyal to the platoon than he is to the team to the Navy to the country. And that that's a thing that you can get scared of. Right.

And there is a reality to that because you're in a when you're in a platoon, you just said it. Like you spent 18 months training with someone and then go on employment for 11 months. And by the way, you risk lives together and you took lives together. Like there's things going on. So the patch thing is a real thing And you just have to You can't throw away the baby with the bathwater And yet the same time

Like what are we going to do now a squad patch Now we're going to do a fire team patch We're going to do like a swim buddy patch And where is it end? Where does it stop? So again there's a bunch of different ways to handle it And there's certain platoons that have a patch That means a lot to them and it's awesome

There's certain platoons that have a patch And it doesn't mean You know It doesn't mean really much to them They don't care about it It's just one of those things as a leader just got to pay attention to. Yeah. You just got to pay attention to it.

I mean, in the Army, you know, the way the Army works, their patches, you know, they have official patches for their units. That's the way it is. And it is a, they wear those patches with pride, especially once they get that combat patch on their right arm. Like that's a thing they're going to wear for the rest of their lives with pride. And so here it is a little thing that we kind of joke about that I kind of joke about. It's like, oh, patches, you hear me kind of making fun of them.

That's a real. it can be a very important thing. And so we as leaders need to remember that. And again, this goes over to, you know, what you're doing in the civilian sector. I've worked with plenty of construction companies that have some sticker that you get to put on your helmet after such and such a thing or such and such a project.

You do these things and you get recognized for it. You know, even the uniforms in the Navy, you get the stripes on your arm. And if you've been well behaved, you get gold stripes. And if you're Tony Afratti, you get red stripes because you've been busted down a few times. And you look at that group of guys, you see your brother over there with red stripes,

like, okay, you know, he was getting after it, maybe a little bit too much. So just the important thing to think about. You can really, you can make those patches beneficial. You can make them additive to the team. You can make them unify the team. They can put culture. They can implement culture into the team.

And they can also do the opposite of each one of those things, depending on how you handle them as a leader. So important things. to think about how about your relationship with your troop commander that now you're a platoon commander yeah and so you have a a sister platoon so there's another platoon commander and then above you in the chain of command oh you have three we were the super troop at the time okay so we had three platoon commanders and you have a troop commander who's in charge of all three platoons and it sounds like you started with a little bit of friction yeah was it over the patch thing or was it something else

no just uh yeah just general yeah just uh probably some personality conflicts there not seeing eye to eye. Some of it was how he carried himself, some of the things he cared about that I didn't care about too much. And if you asked him, I don't know that he would have ever have said, we have a bad relationship. Because I was smart enough to not have a bad relationship with him, but he definitely rubbed me the wrong way. And my first inclination with that was I just didn't want to spend any time with him. I wanted to minimize contact as much as I could. And luckily, you know, I figured out real quick that was a silly, silly tactic. to take. We literally worked in the same office, like the same office space about this size.

We were going to be together for two years. So he's not the worst guy in the world. We just didn't see eye to eye on some stuff. And I made it my goal after realizing, well, one, if I didn't have a good relationship with my troop commander, it's definitely going to affect me, my sanity, but more important than that, it's going to affect my platoon. Because if I don't have a good a relationship with them. There's not going to be a lot of trust there. I'm not going to have a lot of room to maneuver as far as different things that I care about with my guys. Things on deployment will probably be affected. So I started to make it my goal to build out as good of a relationship with him as I could. And, you know, there were things, some of the things that got, brought me the wrong way

with them is he would, he had a little bit of an ego too. You know, I did my first tour as well, but he had a little bit of ego, had a hard time admitting when he had messed something up or when something was wrong, would jump to conclusions. That was the one that really got to me, is I felt like I was a pretty squared away guy. The other two platoon commanders were pretty squared away as well. You're our troop commander. If something's wrong, come to us, let's talk about it. Don't jump to conclusions like we did something on purpose or we're out to, you know, to screw the troop over or something like that. So that really rubbed me the wrong way.

So luckily I was wise enough to see, don't avoid, you got to start building this relationship out with him. And I did everything I could to really start to strengthen that relationship. He was a little bit of a micromanager I felt like. So I started over-communicating things with him, including him on all these different emails,

updating them all the time. You know, as much as I could, trying to build that relationship out. And over time, throughout the workup, we were able to build out a really good working relationship. Now, every now and then, you know, we still jumped to conclusions. There were still some personality things that rubbed me the wrong way, but they definitely got a lot better. And again, if you were to ask him, hey, did you have a frictional relationship with Sean? He probably would have said, no. He probably would have said, there's some things we didn't see eye to eye on, but no, I don't think we had a frictional

relationship. And to his credit, he was always a big advocate for me, always representing me well up the chain of command. It wasn't like he was petty or vindictive or anything like that. He always had my back up the chain of command. Hey, Sean's good to go. All that stuff. But it was just, you know, if you ask me, do I want to hang out with him or not hang out with him? The answer would have been, no, I don't really. But building that relationship out, it made the situation a whole lot better throughout training, and then what really paid off was we deployed. So first tour, go to Afghanistan, where we want to go again. We want to go to Afghanistan again, and we want to go to Iraq. That's where every seal wants to go. At the time, that wasn't in the cards for us, we were going to what's called

the crisis response element, which is a place in the Middle East that they stood up right around the time that Benghazi happened in 2011. And it was basically, we need a force in the Middle East that's capable of responding to a crisis or an emergency if needed. So most of the special operations forces in the military, we either deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and then a handful would still go to Pacific Theater to do some training over there. But they wanted some dedicated force in theater that could respond to different emergencies. So you had two seal platoons from our troop. You had the, at the time they were called the SIF platoon, I think now they're the KRIF platoon.

It's basically the Green Berets assault troop was there. Lift from TF160th was there. It was supposed to be this package that we had all the assets that we needed. And when something bad happens, you know, the president or the Sechdef would make the call. We'd spin the birds up. We'd load it and off we'd go to save the day. That's what the plan is. It sounds awesome.

It sounds awesome, but it's actually not that cool because it never happens, Echo Chos. Never, never. Almost never. Yeah, almost never. Come to find out, almost never. But at the time, it had never happened. So one, just trying to keep my platoon motivated, that's where they're going when all of their friends that are in different platoons are going to, I think we sent four platoons that tour to Afghanistan. So the majority of the team is going to Afghanistan.

So that was a leadership challenge in and of itself, is just getting guys prepared for that and the mindset of it is and we're going to crush it while we're there and we're going to be ready even if nothing happens. nothing ever happens. We get there. Fortunately for us, there was the opportunity for that over the beach mission that we talked about on the last podcast, which was the best mission I was ever a part of as far as an actual seal mission set. Like you're putting everything together on that operation that we trained for. So it was an amazing experience. But there's multiple platoons there that could have done that job. And my platoon got picked, or I got picked to take the, to take the guys down there and I know for a fact the reason I got picked is I had a good relationship with that troop commander. Yeah, the the kind of advancement I guess of

echelon front and I wrote about in the book Leadership Strategy and Tactics of this idea of teaching what a what a relationship is and how to build it because for a long time I was saying and we were all saying like build a relationship build a relationship and then when we finally broke down what a relationship is and how you build it which obviously it's something that we all instinctively did. But just like anything else, instinctively doing something and it works and you go, okay, that's cool, it's really hard to teach someone what your instincts were if you don't identify them and how you made them happen. So, you know, being able to teach people, trust, listen, respect, influence, and care.

That's what a relationship is. And if you want to build a relationship, you've got to give the other person those things. You've got to give them trust. You've got to listen to what they have to say. You've got to allow yourself to be influenced. You got to treat them with respect and you got to show them that you care about them. And those are what's beautiful is at work, in a work environment, there is a natural framework for all these things to take place. You know, for you in that case, the guy is a little bit of micromanager.

Okay, so what do you do? Tell them, hey, you're micromanaging me and you need to just trust me. No, you don't do that. It doesn't work. You actually listen to them. You actually say, oh, I'm going to give you more information that you need. Hey, boss, that makes sense. Let me make sure that you understand what's happening.

So you're in the loop. Like, you treat them with respect. Oh, you want me to. give you more detailed plan? Okay, you just allowed them to influence you. You listen to what they have to say. That's what you do. And when you do that thing, you build a relationship. The other piece of this is I've talked before about when you're in a leadership position, the people that you're working with are the terrain that you're maneuvering through. So that's a big difference in the SEAL teams or in any combat unit, at least for a small unit, for small unit

leadership when like a white belt doesn't know what's happening. A blue belt understands the maneuvers that can take place. But then the purple belt understands how to use those maneuvers in the various terrain and can actually not just use the maneuvers in the terrain, but utilize the terrain to make the maneuvers even better. So when it comes to leadership and humans and what made me think of this is, you know, you've got your boss. Just like when we're not, out on the battlefield, I can't move a mountain. I can't shift a ravine to suit my needs. I can't change the human that I'm working with. I have to learn to maneuver and I have to learn, oh, guy's a little bit of a micromanager. Oh, the guy, what was the other thing you said about him?

He jumped conclusions. Oh, guy jumps conclusions. Okay. What am I going to do? Fight against that. No, you go, that's the, that's the terrain. I've got to maneuver around. That's the terrain. I actually am going to utilize, I'm going to figure how to utilize that terrain. If I know this jumps to conclusions I'm gonna make sure that when I feed him a little piece of information I already know what direction he's gonna jump but I'm gonna be ready for it So those are some things to think about from from the relationship aspect You're not gonna listen do people change yes people do change a little bit Sometimes over time usually after some kind of a traumatic event

Like a traumatic event people can change even some you know it's a traumatic event when Dave calls you like, you can't be Batman because you don't want to have a mask on. That's like a little bit of a traumatic event for you. It's one of those things that you can make a little shift, right? But there's, you know, other big traumatic people get fired from a job. But I've seen people get fired from a job and just been like, I shouldn't have been fired.

You know, I had a friend of mine get fired from a seal platoon and he had beef with another guy and they had the big, you know, showdown. And he ends up getting fired. And I was like, bro, what happened? And he's like, that guy couldn't have worked with him. And I was like, bro, you just got fired. It doesn't matter. Like, whatever you're saying, you just got fired.

That's terrible. It's horrible. And the guy's not a bad guy. Yeah. And he's getting fired. So we can't, people aren't going to change. And when you're working for someone and they've got some idiosyncrasies or they've got some little personality traits that you don't like very much, you can't, you can't necessarily

change them. It's very difficult to change it. And by the way, this goes down the chain of command too. And you, that's why sometimes the parameters that you've got to put on some, on some of your subordinates are parameters that contain or mitigate these idiosyncrasies that people have. You put a little thing on, do you got someone that jumps to conclusions that works for you? Hey, if you get into these four scenarios, hit me up and let me know what you're doing

before you go. You know what I mean? Like, you know that they're going to jump to conclusions. Hey, if you are going to fire anyone, let me. me know before you fire someone or even like oh you're gonna write if you know if I got Sean over here and he's a jump to conclusion kind of guy and just writing everybody up you know hey listen I'm not trying to micromanage you but I just want to make sure we're on the same page if you're gonna write someone up just let me know when you're

gonna do it that way I can have a conversation you can be like dude you're gonna write echo up like because he was late by three minutes like is that the kind of relationship you want to have with this guy when was the last time he's late it never been late before and you're gonna write you see what I'm saying so you can have these conversations so just important things to keep in mind man, the trustless and respect, influencing care, the building relationship things, very important. And then human beings are terrain that you're going to have a hard time changing the terrain. You change it a little bit.

You know, you can blow some trees to give you a better line of sight or you can cut down some trees. We did that before. Like, hey, just saw down these trees so we have a little better field of view. Put a loophole in a wall. You can do those things. But you're not going to be able to drastically change the tree. Terrain just like you're not going to be able to drastically change some of human being and their their personality and their instincts Hey, good luck over time might have some influence over them. Yeah, but it's not going to be an immediate

gratification by you know hey, what can I say to my boss to get him off my back? Nothing Nothing. There's not one thing you can say to your boss to get him off your back. You know, what can I say to my subordinate that'll make him start paying? Nothing. There's not one thing. There's not one single thing that you can say There are some things you can do over time. You know, if someone's got a big ego, you can assign them things that are outside their capacity. If someone lacks confidence, you can assign them things that are within their capacity

and let them excel, and those things will be good. But there's not one thing you can say. So be careful of those things. Yeah. And, you know, debriefing is a huge thing. Hindsight, looking at what we could have done better. You know, there was definitely two traits that I had that I could have done better.

And he had talents, for sure. He was awesome administratively, which at the time, if you were to say what was my weak spot, I probably would have said a little bit of admin for certain things. If it was an award or something that mattered for my guys, like I would put in whatever time I needed to make sure that was done. But there was other things that I didn't pay that much attention to. And as a troop commander, he has the perspective of why that matters. And he was hard on me about that stuff. And then what was my big issue, my first platoon that I just talked about that Dave helped cure?

Well, it's not like he said that. and it just went away totally. So why did I have such an issue with this troop commander? Troop commander had a little bit of an ego, but what did I have too? I had a little bit of an ego. So, oh, he's micromanaging me? Why is he micromanaged me? I'm a squirt away guy.

You know, we're- I just got back from 11 months of combat in Afghanistan. Come on. Exactly. Don't worry, I got your script down. So that was the things that I was doing that were not helping this situation out whatsoever. And luckily I realized, hey, if I go in there ego to ego with my troop commander, it's rock paper rank, I lose every single time. And I can't control necessarily his ego,

what he had, but I can control my own ego. And what can I do to maybe get him off my back a little bit with some of the administrative stuff and build some trust them administrative stuff is show him that I'm taking on board what he's saying and provide a little bit better updates and all the other things that he really wanted. So it's not like it was a one-way street of, of, you know, this issue. There was definitely things I was doing to contribute to it.

Yeah, and those relationships, it's so awesome when you have a good relationship, when you build good relationships. I was actually at the dinner table the other night with my daughter, Rana. I hear good things. Yeah, yeah, hear good things. So for some reason, we were talking about the seal teams.

And she was asking, well, my kids don't know about, you know, the seal teams, you know, like I don't sit there. and talk to my kids about the SEAL teams. And she was like, oh, she was like, so wait, so were you in a platoon? She was talking about something. She goes, wait, so were you in a platoon?

I was tasking a bruiser because she went to the muster. She was like, wait, so. And she's working while she's at the muster, so she didn't get to see the whole thing. Anyways, I think the conversation was like, so you were, was tasking to bruiser a platoon? And I was like, no. I go, it was, there was two platoons.

in tasking a bruiser. And she goes, oh. And then she goes, and Leif was in charge at one of those platoons? And I go, yeah. And then she goes, and Seth was in charge of the other one. And I go, yeah.

And you could see she had this look on her face like, oh, are you serious? Like, what a freaking joke. Yeah. Like how fun was that? Your job. Yeah. Because she's been, because she knew late, she'd known Leif and Seth

since she was a little tiny kid since we're, you know, what was that? 2005, she met Leif and Seth. And so she's seen us broing out for the past 20 years. And it's like, oh, so these guys that are your bros that you hang out with and have fun with and go surfing with, that's who you worked with all the time. She was like, and you can see the look of like, oh, okay.

And then she's like, and JP was there. And I'm like, yeah, and JP was there. And Tony was like, yeah. And so she starts putting together the picture of like, oh, so it was like awesome. You know, she didn't say that, but she was like, okay, I get it. So yes, relationships are paramount. you get done with that and then it's buds instructor yeah budd instructor went over there uh wanted to do my true commander right away but yeah i was way too junior there's no way there way no my exo who was an

awesome guy just when i told him that he just laughed literally laughed and he's like bro you are way too junior to do your troop commander's spot so buds was the the next move after that what do you when you talk to young men right now that want to go to buds how do you tell me to get ready for it run run and swim yeah i mean if what i should probably say is if you need me to tell you how to get ready for buds nowadays, you probably shouldn't go to buds. Like everything is out there. The Navy has all the information that you need.

They have training programs. They have all this stuff. But I just tell them, you know, if they're really asking me, honestly, I just tell them run more than you think you need to run and swim more than you think you need to swim. And then hopefully you'll not quit. That's what I tell.

They say, what do I need to do to get through buds or whatever? I'm like, just don't quit. Yeah. You legitimately have a really good chance of making, You got probably a 95% chance of making it through buds. Maybe a 90% chance of making it through buds if you don't quit. Yeah. I would say nowadays it's 100% right because you won't get to buds unless you can physically

qualify in the runs and everything you do. If it was back in the day, as you like to say, when they just kind of fed you to buds and it was what it was without like a pipeline of knowledge, maybe that number is 80, 70%. Now, like you don't get to buds unless you're in shape enough to get through buds. I think the screening test that I took to get to buds I think I think I literally the minimum score on pull-ups was like six Yeah Six pull-ups bro if you if you can only do six pull-ups or you can have a lot a lot a hell a hard time getting through that O course doing freaking back to back to back to back rope climbs while you're wet and sandy like it is not gonna be easy

Yeah so yeah don't quit but be in some good ass shape when you show up there so then you finally get to your troop commander tour and so speaking of relationships how was the relationship for on to that troop commander tour yeah with well I learned you can learn what you you can learn something from everybody my first platoon it was all positive learning awesome platoon chief awesome platoon commander troop commander jack car who was amazing as a troop commander and genuinely cared about everybody in the troop to include the squad commanders which you know being a troop commander sometimes troop commanders don't really show that much love or pay that much attention to their squad commanders. And that was not Jack. He was definitely involved and, you know, mentoring us and spending time with us, awesome troop chief.

So all the lessons that I learned from them were how to do things, how to conduct yourself. Yeah, that's a huge point you just made. And I remember you guys going through, but Jack or any troop commander, there's a lot of stuff going on. Like there's a lot of stuff going on. And it's not just the 40 or if that was a super troop. Was that a super troop? That, that platoon was not. Okay.

So you got 40 mugs. Like there's a lot of stuff going on. You got the command. They're all spinning up. They're trying to figure things up. So there's a lot of things going on. A lot of things going on. So you can, if you're not careful, you can start looking up and out too much,

which you hear me talk about up and out. You've got to be looking up and out. But if you're not careful, you're looking up and out too much. And you're not training these young leaders to lead, which is, problematic. So yeah, make sure you're investing in your people. Sounds like Jack definitely did that with you. Yep. And then second tour, we just talked about the troop commander, learned some good stuff from him. Again, administratively, the guy was dialed in and it definitely helped me out throughout my career to learn from him why it matters, how to do it right, all those different

things. I also learned some things from him that were things that I did not want to do with my own troop. I felt like he was a little bit overbearing with how we handled the platoons from time to time as far as like the issue of the patches and whatnot platoon identity. Sometimes it was a little bit more like it's just the troop, it's just the troop. And I'm like that's great and we're all about the troop, but like it's okay if the platoons have a little bit of identity themselves and they take pride in being in the platoon as long as like you said earlier, it doesn't become frictional. The competition doesn't become frictional as long as we're all three

troop, that's great. So the lessons that I took going to my troop commander tour were a lot of good things from Jack and then deliberately wanting to make sure that my platoon commanders felt like they were platoon commanders because there were times my platoon commander tour, I felt like I had more freedom as a squad commander than I did as a platoon commander at certain times from my leadership. So I wanted to very deliberately make sure that the troop had the troop identity, our standards, ready to rock and roll. We had our five troop standards. And what I told our guys was if you are doing these five things at all times, you'll never hear from me about anything other than great job. Like, these are the things that my SEA and I care about. And the guys did them. They stuck to them. It was

great. I had great relationships with my platoon commanders, all my platoon chiefs. And again, I was given a huge gift because I was given three really squared away platoon commanders, three really squared away platoon chiefs, but then we deploy and we take two extra platoons from Team 5 to Iraq with us, because we needed that many platoons inside of Iraq for what was going on at the time inside of Mosul. Yeah, so this is like 2015, 2016. You go on deployment. And Jason Gardner's your CMC.

Yeah. Yeah. You guys came to my house. We did. The troop leadership came to my house for a freaking leadership brief prior to departure. Yeah. brought the guys over there, all five platoons now, because now I have five platoons.

And it was amazing. I mean, it was a troop commander. What else could you ask for, right? So I wanted them to hear because we were going to go very likely. We didn't know at the time, obviously, there was a certainty, but the writing was on the wall. We were probably going to end up, at least some of the platoons are going to end up inside of Mosul, heavy urban combat.

Obviously, y'all had a ton of experience in that environment. I wanted them to hear from you, your big takeaways from that environment, and then you're just big takeaways about working in that joint environment where you're Marines, Air Force, Army, and you're playing in their battle space. And then just the lessons that you all learned over there. It's good for people to hear things from an outside perspective as well. And you all had a lot of things to offer us. So came over there. You know, you talked to him about Ramadi, asked a bunch of questions. Our guys asked a bunch of questions. It was great. So we deploy four of those platoons for the platoon commanders, my three that I went through workup with, great relationships.

Like, I love those guys. One of the guys from the other platoon that we adopted, very easy to get along with. Same thing. Great guy. He was just fired up to be going to Iraq. They were solid platoon. And the other platoon was great too, but me and the platoon commander did not have as good of a relationship. Now, that was 100% my fault. So I don't really know him that well. But I don't really know him that well. Literally we get given these platoons and then we deploy about a month later. So we deploy and he goes to an outstation with his platoon and he's asking for lots of different things to support. And I don't have all these things to give away. I've got now five different platoons inside of Iraq that are broken into seven different outstations. Resources are limited.

So as a troop commander, I have to sit up here and try to figure out who really needs this, who really needs that piece of equipment, who really needs these weapon systems, that type of thing. And I made a comment to him. I was busting his chops, which I did all the time with the other platoon commanders,

but we'd gone through workup together. So they know where it's coming from, and they bust my chops right back, and it was kind of like how guys talk to each other. I should have been more self-aware. Me and this guy did not have that level of relationship. So we're on a call and I bust his chops. I say something about how needy he is and how he wants everything.

And in my defense, I'm totally just joking. It just goes dead silent on the, was this just him on the call? Just him on the call. No, no, yeah, just him on the call. Dead silent on the other end. And instantly, I'm like, oh, I've made a mistake.

So he's like a white. do you think I'm needy and I'm like, oh my goodness. So I try to, hey man, I'm just goofing around. De-escalate. Yeah, de-escalate. Yeah, I'm just goofing around, but it wasn't happening. Like he was really offended by it. That really damaged the relationship.

I spent the rest of that deployment trying to convince him that I was in his corner. And he doesn't know a lot of these things and he doesn't need to know a lot of these things. but his personality, it was things at him and Jason and our commanding officer. They didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. So there was some friction at the command level with him as well, but I was 100% sure that he was the right guy to be in the position he was in because I knew he was very squared away on target, and I knew he wasn't going to allow his guys to take risk that they shouldn't be taking

in an environment where they definitely could have done things. that they shouldn't have been doing inside of Mosul with not a lot of oversight. I knew he had the respect of his guys. I knew his platoon chief had the respect of his guys. And I knew that he was not going to allow them to do things that they should not be doing. So he was the right guy for that job. There was times, there was a time where I was sitting down in Jason's office and the commanding officer's office. And the commanding officer was to the point to where he wanted to relieve him.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. And the relationship, I have a great relationship with Jason. I have a great relationship with my commanding officer. And I said, hey, sir, I can completely understand why you feel that way. But if you can just take on board what I'm saying, here's why I think he's the right person for this job.

And let me just try and mitigate as much of the personality things as we can. And I laid out my case and like a good commanding officer, he trusted the guy that was closest to the problem. And he said, okay, you know, he's yours. You've got to manage it, but I'm not going to relieve him. I don't tell this guy that this. I'm never going to tell him. Like, he doesn't need to know that stuff.

But I spent that whole diploma trying to convince him that I was supporting him, that I was there for him, that I was trying to enable him to be, you know, do the best job he can inside Mosul. And I don't know if I ever, ever got through to him or not. I know for a fact. I know for a fact the reason that that relationship soured is because that joke that I cracked. And look, if we had gone through training together

and I had that 18 months with him, it would have been no big deal. But we didn't have a relationship and I crossed the line and, you know, he just took it the wrong way and the next six months was rough for me and him. I was just kidding. It's real hard.

That's a real hard to pull that around back. Yeah, that's like, you know, what do they say when you're out, Exactly. When you fire your weapon, you can't pull that, you can't bring that round back into the gun. It's out. And unfortunately, when you open your mouth,

you can't bring those words back in. And you keep, you know, especially when the weight, the weight that you have when you're in a leadership position and the words that you say carry so much more weight and oftentimes people don't realize how much weight the words that they say. I, I learned that on a,

on a steady learning curve throughout my career. You know, where, because, you know, I was a freaking, I was an E4 in the day. It was back in the day, dude. I mean, there was no, there was literally not one thing that was filtered coming out of my mouth talking shit to the other guys in the platoon. Not one single thing would be filtered ever.

And that's the way every single guy in a platoon was. You know, the E4, E5 mafia. Used to be E4 mafia, by the way, ECHO Charles, because back in the day, we weren't getting the E5 from that. So it was E4. You know, we and you know, you're just going to any chink in the armor that you saw on one of your friends, it was attack mode all day long. And then as I got more and more senior, I realized, oh, you know, I'd like say something to some guy like, oh, good shoot and knucklehead.

And you could see like, oh, if I said that to my peer, you know, good shooting knucklehead. They'd be like, well, let's see you. You know, they're talk shit back. When you're in the platoon commander and then a troop commander, it's like you say, you say. a good shoot knucklehead and they look at you like oh I let my boss down or you know now I'm gonna get a bad even just crazy thoughts so you gotta be you definitely have to be uh careful about the weight of your words as as you increase your level of responsibility in in the chain of command the last I would say month things got better and the reason things got better was he was in

Mosul with his platoon doing awesome stuff command master chief and our CEO, one of them had to be in Mosul at all times, per the general's orders inside of Iraq. One of them had to be in Mosul kind of C-toeing some different things, commanding controlling different things. So Jason was up there. And again, you know, he had a frictional relationship with the CEO. So they had a little exchange. And the guy is super squared away, like super squared away, super smart guy, great at his job,

but just, you know, sometimes probably picking and choosing the right battles is what I would define it as with the commanding officer. and it kind of escalates, and this is what Jason's telling me, and Jason's like, he says he's not getting any support, he's not getting any support from his troop leadership, all these other things, and Jason just looks at him and goes, the only reason you're here, yeah, yeah, is because Sean stood up for you when the boss wanted to fire you. And it was like, to him, I wasn't there, so this is Jason,

and of course I trust Jason. He said it was kind of took the guy back. He didn't know these discussions went on. And Jason's like, he's been the only guy at the leadership level that's consistently been in your corner. So maybe pump the brakes a little bit. After that, Jason didn't tell me that that happened until after the tour. But the last month, he was getting ready for a green team at the time, too. So I would call him and just ask him, how's the workouts going?

You know, are you able to stay in shape? How's the ops going? Things like that. And I noticed there was a little bit of a shift. It was more of a conversation versus just one and two-word answers. and then come to find out, you know, Jason had a little heart to heart with him, and I think it got him back in my corner a little bit,

but it was still, it still wasn't great. Yeah, I, I, well, I have, like, rules, like, no joking on the radio. You've heard Laf talk about that, like, with me, I was like, you are not, now, even, like, on inner squad radios, even on inner squad radios, even on inner squad radios, don't joke or don't make jokes on these radios, and certainly not on any freaking, like, battalion net,

brigade net, company net, Like never make any jokes. But that's a good rule. And you can hear Leif talk about the fact that like, I didn't joke with those guys for eight weeks when I met him. And it's like, yeah, dude, I don't, you got to be careful. And you got to, you can't reel those things back in. And so you got to be careful.

One of my house, I was a young seal. And there's on, on ships, on Navy ships. You ever been on a Navy ship before? Oh, yeah. What'd you do on a Navy ship? So our first deployment was supposed to be the Cree deployment. We went to Afghanistan was supposed to be Cree. So our entire workup was basically Mar-Ops focused.

And then all of our UL, all of our TJIT, the last phase of training. And then G20 Summit, PSD protection for the president at the time, spent two and a half weeks on the Palo Lou. So I don't have a lot of time. But during that time frame, I had more time than most seals on a ship. I had a lot of time on a Navy ship as a seal. And there's a thing on the Navy ship. called Navy Red and it's basically a radio frequency that goes in between all the ships in the little fleet that you're with so you got like six or seven Navy vessels and on the bridge where the

commander of each ship sits and where the the freaking admiral has piped into his room is this Navy Red which is this is the one common frequency for the whole little fleet that's out there and um it's not called a fleet leave's going to be like it's not a fleet dude it's a battle group like it's a battle group okay or like the arc the amphibious ready group so whatever little you little group that you're with there you go layf um they have this navy red thing so we were planning some op and our our task unit commander was over on the like the mothership and so we're planning this op and my assistant platoon commander he's a naval academy guy and super smart and very square away very squared away very squared away and very squared away and very

and kind of quiet. So he's, and for whatever reason, this op, like we had some big major change in the op and we're going to do this, you know, it was like helicopters

and now we're using boats. There was some major change. And we had to get comms really quick. And for whatever reason, he got called to the bridge to get on Navy Red and communicate with our task unit commander. And the task unit commander tells him

whatever he tells him. And this, this Naval Academy guy who's totally squared away who's quiet and humble, he goes, you know, he says,

you know, you're going to be using boats. Hey, sorry, you guys are going to be using boats now instead of vessels, you know, you got to have the boats

ready in, or instead of heloes, you've got to have the boats ready in an hour and a half. And my system platoon commander goes, whiskey tango fox trot over. And it was like the whole

bridge, everyone says like, oh, yeah, he got some shit for that. So yes, be careful. When you're cracking jokes, look, I like to have fun. I like to have fun as much as the next guy, which you're in a leadership position.

The fun and the joking has definitely got to take a backseat to what's going down as far as your leadership role goes. So be careful. What else about that deployment as a troop commander? I know you guys did that op where you guys rolled in or one of your platoons rolled in for those SAS guys. Yeah. Do we talk about that? I know we did not.

I don't know how I left that one out. That's a good one. Yeah, it is because, I mean, SES guys are just, man, legit. Legit is the only word. Yeah, the only word for them. So they're up there, small group of them. I think it was only about eight guys. Or up in, outskirts of Mosul,

and they're running their own ops. Just FYI. The British as a whole are freaking professional. They are free they are the British military so professional and I haven't worked with a ton of them, but I've worked with the SBS and I've worked with the SAS. And they're freaking outstanding. They're just freaking outstanding. So and then when you're the SAS is just another level. It's what all of our is based on. All based on the SAS. S laid the groundwork for everything and they're respected for a reason. Yeah. respected for a reason. And just that Brit mentality is just a different mentality too.

I mean, you know. Yes. Yeah, just a. Yes, I do. I know it well. Just a different mentality. So they're up there in Mosul and they're running their own ops. And I think Development Group had a couple of guys up there as well, not working with them, but they were running some ops as well.

Much higher level operations than what we were running. And one of my platoons was their closest to them geographically. So they were the SAS is QRF whenever the SES would roll out. And then SAS at times would be our QRF whenever our guys would roll out. They had a real good relationship with each other. Spent time with each other at the different bases, both had a good relationship. So anytime they needed someone to be on the hook to be the quick reaction force, which is basically we got an operation plan.

We're going to do the operation. Something does not go right. We need reinforcements. The first step is call the quick reaction force. So you don't go out without having a QRF. and ready. So when they go out, if my platoon is the QRF, obviously that means they're not going out. That means everybody's there, jocced up, ready to roll in case something goes down. So SAS rolls into Mosul in thin skin vehicles, four of them with their turp, which just right away, you're like,

SAS, legit. Just a different mentality. And this is during the height of the Mosul clearance. So ISIS controls all of Mosul at this point in time. We have not made that much ground inside of Mosul. They go in to do their thing and they basically, I don't know if they got lost or if they got cut off, but they got cut off and isolated in a compound and things were going south real quick. So they called Arpatoon to come and react to try to help them out. Arpatoon load up their big up armored vehicles. They look like, again, the giant tanks on wheels basically.

and they roll into Mosul to try and, you know, help these SAS guys out. By the time that our guys got to their general position, not even in the compound, the general position, there was ISIS guys peppering them from like two blocks away. And, you know, they've got small arms fire. That's all they really got. But they're definitely handling their own. But they needed that QRF. It got so dicey that our guys had to find a wall that was weak enough that they could push down with one of their vehicles. because they couldn't even maneuver to the front to help them out

because it was just too much fire coming in. So this is a sketchy situation, like a super sketchy situation for these SES guys to be in. Like they're in complete, they're about to get overrun is what's about to happen. As good as they are, it's just a numbers game at this point in time. So our guys get there.

They drive down, drive over some walls, through some walls, knock them down, get into the compound finally, and pick these guys up. Did they leave their vehicles? I don't know. I think they did. Damn.

But I'm not positive. Don't quote me on that. I'm not positive. They get there, door pops open, you know, guy hops in, like it's no big deal whatsoever. Straight up just goes, hey, thanks for the lift, mate. Like it wasn't a big thing that they were in this running gun battle. About to be overrun. Oh, with all of ISIS inside of Mosul about to be overrun.

So just legit. I mean, what else can you say besides just, like, And then it just cracks me up, that Brit mentality of it is what it is. And you end up losing one of your EOD guys over there. Yeah. Yeah, JJ. That was right as the clearance was kicking off. And we talked about this, but he, we only had two dedicated EOD guys.

And again, as a troop commander, you're trying to figure out where's the best place to put your dedicated EOD assets. Because you've got seven outstations that could all use Navy, highly trained Navy EOD guys that have gone through your workup with you, that have gone through your assaults training with you, that know all of your SOPs. So I was trying to figure out where to really put this amazing asset. And one of our platoons just kept getting in these IED issues where they were, complex IED issues to include incoming rounds that had chemical agents inside of them, to where such an extent that our guys couldn't roll out without at least having their Kim stuff with him. I don't think they ever put it on, but they had to have it with

because some of the rounds that were coming in had some, you know, chlorine gas or something in it. So it was sketchy. So I made the call to put the EOD assets up there because that's where they were needed most. And then during the initial stages of the clearance, as they're trying to get to Mosul. So at that point in time, they'd gotten close to the city but not to the city. They got to get obviously into the city to start clearing the everything out. So they're trying to push big operation to try to get the entire coalition for, force to Mosul so that we could take about a week break, prep everything, and then start the

clearance. So kinetic, like crazy kinetic day, lots of different gun battles. And they were in a position and they realized that the enemy was maneuvering to take some high ground. They were about to be in a really bad spot. So they made the call, hey, we've got to make a move from here, get to a different piece of terrain. Ploon chief made the call, identified some terrain. They start driving in their up armored vehicles to get where they need to go. and JJ, the EOD chief, is in the lead vehicle, and he's doing his best to spot from the passenger seat. So he sees something ahead that he thinks looks like an IED, and he calls an all-stop, everybody stops, and then he kind of identifies it's definitely an IED, and what he realizes is pretty sure they just drove into a minefield.

So he makes the call, hey, we've got to reverse out, and the best thing to do is just try to keep exactly in the same time. tread that you're in because if you drove in that way, the thought process is obviously you're probably safe by going back out that direction. So my platoon chief pops his door open and he starts to spot for the driver. And JJ says, hey, that's my job. That's not your job. He makes the platoon chief close his door. J.J. pops his door open. He's spotting for the guys. And I don't know if it just didn't go off the first time or maybe they just barely missed it. But, um, you know, um, They ran over a pressure plate, and JJ was spotting with his head outside the door, half his body outside the door, trying to make sure that guys were getting out safe.

And he just took the full force of that blast. And guys went to work on him, did some heroic things in the middle of a firefight, but it just wasn't going to happen. He expired within about two hours. You, what was your plan when you came home from that deployment? I wanted to do another troop commander tour because I was very junior. So I asked my commanding officer, and he laughed to me and said, no, you can stay around to be the ops boss if you want to do that, but you're not going to do another troop commander tour. So didn't want to leave Team 5, loved it.

So did the ops job for a little bit before getting bounced over to trade at. So you're over there at trade at for a couple years. We talked about that last time you were here. Got out. You did your startup thing. Again, these are things we covered up that last time. But eventually you start over at Eshlam Front. Yeah.

Having a good time. Oh, loving it. Yeah. I was just up in New York with Cody for a couple of days, working with some of New York's finest. I mean, what's not to love about that? Freaking outstanding. And then you got primal beef going on. What's the progress there at primal beef?

Yeah. I've been going for about a year and a half now. Everything's solid. And when we started the company, we wanted simple is the thing that we teach. So what we tried to do was keep it as simple as we possibly could. until we figured out basically logistically what's the best way to make sure that you don't want any part of the cow to go to waste. What does everybody want when they want beef? Ribbi. Everybody wants ribi. Everybody wants steak. You only get about 26 ribbyes from a cow. You get about 26 New York

strips and you get about 18 fillets. You get a lot of ground beef and then you get some different awesome cuts that fly under the radar sometimes. Your flank's your bevet steak, your hangar steaks, all of those are awesome, but they're lesser known cuts. So we wanted to make sure that we were, I've been eating all those steaks. They're freaking good. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, I don't,

just you go to a restaurant, A, they might not have them, but B, if it's ribeye or flank stick, like I'm just gonna get the ribeye just out of habit and out of go with what you know, right? So I really didn't start eating some of these other cuts and so you started sending me these boxes filled with them. And I'd be like, oh, Oh yeah. Good to go.

The flat iron steak, it's become my favorite steak. Now, if you still put a rib eye in a flat, I'm eating both of them. But the flat iron is amazing. Yeah, that flat iron thing's ridiculous. It's so good. But you get one per cow, you know, so it's a scarce resource, if you will. So we were trying to keep things very simple and try to figure out the best way to make sure we're honoring the entire animal and not wasting or not able to move some of those different cuts. So we built out some boxes and we tried to make the boxes the best value we could for the customer with the best cuts they could get in there, but then also make it to where X amount of boxes made a whole cow basically.

So we wanted to keep things very simple. The feedback we got from everybody that's tried the beef is they love it. And the feedback we kept getting was we'd like to pick whatever we want to put in the box. So we made the change. We redesigned a new website because lesson learned. our old website did not really allow us to do a lot of customization. So that's probably my biggest lesson learned from it is I should have done more research ahead of time knowing it's an e-commerce platform and really look into what designs,

what website designs, what companies are really meant for e-commerce. We went with one that wasn't really made for e-commerce and it just didn't allow a lot of customization, which meant we couldn't give some certain options to the customers that we really wanted to give. So we scrapped the old website, built a whole new website out. So now, what do you want now? Now it's Shopify. Yeah, I really apologize for not telling you to go with Shopify because I've made transitions at Origin USA to Shopify, made transition to Jocko Fuel at Shopify. And those are big, massive websites with big, massive e-commerce. And the guys at Shopify are freaking really awesome. And there's a reason why their platform is, is an outstanding.

platform like they have great attitudes uh i've you know echelon front has worked with shopify so they're just they they get it oh yeah yeah i i wish i would have told you that whatever it was a year and a half ago i wish i would have asked you that i was like oh we got this figuring out no big website's a website what's that uh yeah you know uh so now because the new website allows us to basically do whatever we want our goal has always been one to give americans the best beef they can get their hands on, period. And we want to give it to them in a way that they want. So the boxes were great for the time to help us start the company up. They're still there. They're never going away. And people will still order those boxes. But now we made a couple of smaller sampler-sized boxes.

So it's got the same cuts, but about half the samples, because for some reason, you know, 15 pounds of beef, some people have a hard time eating that within a month. For me, that's like a weak supply of beef. But some people don't want 20 pounds of beef a month. So we built some boxes that are about seven or eight pounds, got all the great cuts in there. And then the thing that I'm really excited about as far as the steak and the beef options is we have a build your own box now.

So now it's 10 items, whatever 10 items you want to put in that box is what we're going to give you. Now, I know what most everybody's reaction is. I know what your reaction is going to be is I'm putting 20 rib-eyes in there. Yeah, yeah. But you know now there's no such thing as a bad cut of beef and there's definitely no such thing as a bad cut of primal beef. And all these different steaks are awesome. They're freaking rib-eyes are great.

A flank steak is great. A flat iron steak is ridiculously good. The flank steak is ridiculously good. Yeah. Ridiculously good. It is versatile. Steak, eat it as a steak. Make some tacos.

Make some whatever. You're going to see some amazing. The Shopify platform. This is just like on the top of my head. I just have this stat. we at jaco fuel we we went from one of the other ones to shopify we used to have 70% abandoned carts 70% so people would fill up a cart and then just abandon it and when we got shopify it's now down to like 30% just think of that that's that's like crazy but yeah you're going to

see some some real improvements and all kinds of stuff hell yeah and it's good take care of people what they get them what they want yeah there's never been, we've not had one piece of feedback that's like, we don't like the steak. We don't like the beef. All the feedback we've got is we love you guys. We love what you're doing. The steak's amazing. Thanks for supporting the troops. Can I buy a bunch of ribbys? Can I buy a bunch of strips? So now they have that option. The other thing that's great is if you like those of the boxes and you want those of the boxes, they're still there. And now we have add-on options too. So you build your box out. You know, you get to go check out and maybe we're going to run a sale.

that week on brisket. And you want to throw a brisket in there too. Cool, throw a brisket in there as well. It might come in a different box because brisketes are big, but you can still throw it in there. And then, you know, another thing that we're super excited about that we've been working on for a long time

and being really, really picky about this is the jerky that we got coming out. I don't understand what you did to the jerky that makes it the way it is. It's not, it doesn't taste normal. Like, I mean, obviously it's beef jerky, but damn, it's good. So, like, I got mail, right?

Yeah. I get mail at the house. And my wife, like, put the jerky. I was out of town. She put the jerky. And I guess you told her. I did. You told her.

Like, she wrote a note on it says, like, don't eat this. You know, Sean wants you to do something with it when it comes out or something like this. And I'm like, okay, cool. Well, she staged it in my office. Mistake one. Yeah. Mistake number one. And a lot of times, you know, I get done working out in the morning, shower, get done.

and I'm like jumping onto a call. So I'm jumping onto a call. And so now I've been up for like four hours, worked out, ran, and I'm hungry, you know? And I'm staring at freaking this beef jerky. And quite frankly, I was like, well, you know, it's beef jerky. Look, do when you echo Charles. Yes.

When you hear beef jerky, does your mouth start to water? I see what you're saying. You see what I'm saying? I wasn't like, oh, hell yeah. But I was like, you know what? I'm real hungry right now. And I know it says do not eat until, you know, Sean can tell us you can eat it. But I'm just going to get in there a little bit.

Let's just see what these things are. Just one. Yeah. Bro, I freaking powered through like three bags. It's delicious. So I don't know what you're doing. Yeah. You're doing it right.

Yeah. I mean, it comes down to a couple different things. One is the quality of beef in the jerky is going to matter a ton. So almost all the jerky. If you go to a gas station, that's all commodity beef. Commodity beef meaning is still beef. It's still a cow. Beef is awesome.

but you don't know what kind of cow it is. You don't know where it was raised. You don't know what it was eating. You don't know any of that stuff. What are the chances it's from the Shenandoah Valley? About zero. And what are the chances that it's grass-fed and fruit finish? Again, about zero.

Most of the time, it's probably a dairy cow. And the dairy cow just can't produce milk anymore. And, you know, unfortunately for that cow, they're not just going to let it live a peaceful life out to pasture because of all the milk get produced. It's going to get processed. Dairy cows, if you've seen them, they're not beefy cows. They're, you know, they're massive cows, but they're meant for dairy production, so they don't put a lot of weight on.

It's probably that, or it's some other commodity beef. So the biggest thing is it's still primal beef. It's good cuts from primal beef, and the quality of beef going into it matters a ton. The second thing is do yourself a favor next time you get a package of jerky and just turn that thing around and read the ingredients. that are in that jerky. There's probably 15, if not more, and you probably can't pronounce

a whole lot of those different things. And there's things, when you're making jerky, you dehydrate the jerky. Something has to go in there to bind it together and keep it from completely dehydrating. What a lot of beef jerky producers will do

is they'll use some type of canola oil or some type of vegetable oil because it's cheap, and it's going to keep. keep that moist throughout the process. What we did is, I told them, hey, I want the fewest ingredients you can possibly get in this, and it all has to be clean ingredients.

You can't put any nonsense. You can't put any garbage in here. So the other thing that I think makes it something special and makes it so good is what's in it and then what's not in it as well. So if you look at the back of our original jerky, the ingredients are beef, spice, brown sugar, which is what we used to bind it, a little bit of brown sugar to keep it moist,

and that's it. My wife buys beef jerky, she used to, from Costco. Big bag, because we got five kids, they love jerky. And I looked at the back of it, there's 30 ingredients on the back of them. Like, it's beef jerky. There should be one or two or three ingredients. So even if you look at the ones that we have

that are a little bit flavored, if you look at our sweet and spicy. It's ridiculous. There's like, fine. There's like five ingredients in there. There's honey. There's brown sugar. There's tamari, which is a derivative.

It's not soy sauce, but it's got a similar flavor. I did not want any soy sauce in there for lots of different reasons. But one is, I love my wife. She has celix disease. She can't have soy sauce because soy sauce has wheat in it. Has a lot of things in there we don't need. So for lots of different reasons, I said no soy, which was a bit of a back and forth with the beef turkey producer who's,

a marine, awesome guy, started his own company. They're doing great stuff right now. So small batch jerky. But he's like, you got to, like, everybody put soy in. That's what makes it so moist and everything. I was like, I'm pretty confident the quality of the beef is going to keep it moist. And I don't want a lot of soy sauce in there one because I think it overpowers a lot of the different flavors. Not a big fan of soy to begin with.

And the last piece was my wife can't have it if it's got soy in there. So, Tamari's richer. It's got more of that umami flavor without a lot of the non. nonsense in it. So if you look at the back of the sweet and spicy, it's beef, tamari, brown sugar, spice, and honey. That's it. It sounds like these are the kind of things that are going to help make America healthy again. I would agree. So, so so jerky. You got RFK rolling in. Yeah. And as a guy that's involved in food, what do you think? And farming. Yeah. What do you think what does RFK bring? RFK Jr. Bring to the table. Time will tell, but I think good things. I think his mentality is

kind of getting, one, food back to what food should be and strip out a lot of the things that should not be in our food, a lot of the things that are created in a lab, red 40, yellow, whatever, all these different things. But two, there's also just been a lot of regulation that makes it hard for smaller farms to compete. And it also makes a lot of, I'll give you an example. So the raw milk stuff, whatever your taste, whatever your take is on raw. It's not even like we can apply for a permit and get it tested and all these other things.

It's just most places it's just straight up illegal to sell raw milk. Is it still illegal? Most places. Most places. Yeah. I don't know. We got some kind of raw milk supply going on in my family. There's ways to get it.

Maybe I don't need to say this on the air. Maybe we need to edit this out. We have some raw milk together. No. So here's how people will get around it, which again, this is just silly. It's silly to make people do this. You can buy a share of, this is probably. what you're doing. You can buy a cow, a share of a cow. So I can't sell you raw milk,

but you can buy a cow with me. And if that cow produces raw milk, I can give you the milk from it. It's just a piece of legislation that just makes it more difficult for people to do these. It's like the gun control laws where you have to have these, you can't have a certain thing. And so they make a thing to go over the thing that makes you be able to do the thing that they don't want you to do. It's freaking ridiculous. We could just remove this thing. Yeah. And then if we need to put in some things for health and safety concerns, that's fine. But people are going to find a way around it. And there's just really just no reason for a lot of those different things. Another thing that is coming in with the administration with

the Make America Healthy Again push is Joe Salatin, who is he didn't create regenerative farming, but he's definitely the leading voice in the states for regenerative farming, which is basically traditional farming practices that are good for the animal, good for the land, and good for the consumer. So he's been named an advisor to the USDA, which again, we'll see. what happens, but that's a great step in the right direction for a guy who cares very much about small farms going in to the USDA with an outside perspective of, let's show you some of the roadblocks that you're putting on these farmers. And there's no reason for, I mean, there's reasons why it's happening, but there's really

no reason for this. There's less beef being produced in America now than there has been in the last 70 years. So. And that's because of the regulatory environment? Some of it is regulatory. It makes it very difficult for small farms and even really big farms to make a living. Part of it is it's so difficult for these farmers and ranchers to make a living. Their kids see this and they don't take over the farm.

So the average age of the American farmer right now is mid-60s because the kids aren't taken over the farm. And that's historically been what happens. You know, I've got five kids. If one of them wants to take over the farm one day in the business, that would be amazing. I'm not going to force them to do that, but that would be a goal. It's there for them to take a part of. But there's just so many things that are making it difficult for them to earn any type of living without massive subsidization that the kids just aren't doing it.

They're leaving. So you've got this, and beef consumption is not gone down. So now what do we do? Because of those policies, we get stuff from overseas or the producers that are growing beef are forced to do things that probably they don't even want to do to, to make as much beef as they can, hormones, different stuff like that. And I'm not bashing that farming system whatsoever.

Like, those are good Americans that are producing beef that the country needs. But I bet if you ask them, if that's really what they want to be doing, I bet they would say it's not how my pops did it. That's not how my granddad did it. This is just the system. So I think an outside perspective

and maybe a common sense look at some of that legislation will help. And then just anything in farming, the reason that beef specific, And beef is at all time high price-wise, which, by the way, we have not adjusted the prices of primal beef. Like, we're just absorbing this because we want to make sure the customer gets the most value. But I'll give you an example. Last year, my own personal herd on my farm, we do a cow-calf operation, which means we have some cows. We have a bull.

You know, the cows have their calves. We raise the calves to a certain age, and then we take them to our local livestock auction. And we sell them to different farmers from around the area who. will buy them and then either finish them on grass or they'll finish them on something else and then sell them. So we just do cowcalf. Last year, an average price for a calf for me would be everything is by the pound. So we call it live weight. So what's the live weight of the cow? A good steer for me would bring in about a dollar 50 a pound. So 700 pound steer I'd be making a little less than 1100 bucks, something like that. Now this year,

Average steer, just, you know, he's nothing wrong with him, but he's just not big body, the genetics aren't there or whatever. It's like $2.80. And I was selling multiple steers for over $3. Nothing has changed with those cows over the course of the last couple of years, but everything to do with farming in general, it all comes back to energy prices. Everything that has to go with making a ranch run and making a farm run is heavily dependent upon what's happening with energy costs.

So if fuel is expensive, then the farmer can't just eat that cost. That has to go into the cost of those goods, whether it's beef, whether it's produce, whatever is those things. The farmers are not greedy. They're not making any more money than they were before. But now they're paying $4 a gallon, $5 a gallon for diesel versus $350 that affects the price of all the different produce, all the different beef. So typically in a market, when things go up, they don't come back down. I don't know for certain, but I would be very hopeful that maybe some of this, at least with the beef industry, will start to self-regulate when the farmer's not paying $5 a gallon to fill their tractor up. Well, hopefully we're heading into that direction where we become a little bit more energy independent around these parts in the coming several years.

And then you were talking about, you know, kids hopefully taking over the farm, you know, again, you're not going to. force them, but let's talk a little bit about these kids and raising kids. Yeah. Perhaps, I guess it is the most important job we got, right, being a dad. How's that going? I know you put together a group recently at church. Yeah. What's the deal with that?

What do you got going on there? Yeah. So we call it the forge because we felt like we had to have a name for it. And so we called the forge and it's basically meant to give an environment. We do it once a month on the first Fridays. And it's meant to give an environment. where dads them around the community can come with their sons. And we can very deliberately teach our kids some skills

and also talk to them about some things that we think are important. Some virtues, some masculinity type things, those type of stuff. So we felt like it was necessary. We've all had those conversations with our kids, but sometimes it can feel a little bit forced. But if you have this environment, we're like that's kind of the goal of it, is to get everybody there and talk about these things

and share our different lessons learn. That was kind of the genesis of it was to give the men in our community an environment we could get together, enjoy each other's company, teach our kids some skills that we want them, our sons, some skills that we want them to have, and then also pour into them some lessons learned and some things to think about

that we think will be very important to them as they progress throughout their journey to becoming a man. So that was... What's an example of something that you told the boys like the story, what you tell me the lesson learned was. Yeah.

So we had a big talk about service and the importance of using your abilities, whatever that is, using your strength, using your abilities, whatever it is, in the service of others. Because I think there's a little bit of a push

in our society for a lot of selfishness and a lot of, you know, what can people do for me, that type of thing. So I feel like a big part of being a male. And I'm not saying this doesn't go for females too, but I think a,

big part of being a male is being able to do things for other people and serve other people. I mean, we join the military for probably lots of different reasons, but I'm sure the call to serve and wanting to serve was a big thing. And for me, there's a tradeoff because I don't really realize this until I was a little bit older, but you actually get a lot in return for your service. You do something good for somebody else. Yes, it benefits them. It's at least the same benefit it for you in the long run for how it makes you feel all those different things so we wanted to teach the boys about service and having a very deliberately servant mind mindset so we had a talk and it was a little bit cheesy but it made a big impact on the kids I had a cool knife from

winkler who does the tomahawks for all jack cars books and movies but he also he was famous because it is his knives where the knives used and tom oaks were used and tom oaks were used and last of the Mohicans. So I have this amazing blade from Winkler. And I brought it. I was showing it to the kids and I said, hey, you know, here's this awesome knife. I gave him the backstory of it.

And then I also showed him this scar that I have on my hand. And I said, hey, if I was just to ask you guys which one of these would you rather have, you know, which one would you say? Would you rather have a scar or would you rather have this sick knife? And of course, what are all the boys say?

And they're like, well, we want the knife. I think half of them thought I was going to give him the knife, which, sorry, boy, it's not happening. They said the knife. And I said, well, I understand why you say that. But if I was given the choice between this knife, which means a lot to me because it was a gift from a teammate or this scar, I would take this scar and let me tell you why.

And I told him a story about how I got this scar was working on a farm with my neighbor, Dan, who was getting up an age at the time and needed some help. So I went over to help him. A little kid, you know, I probably was more of a hindrance to this dude than I was in actual help. but I was trying to help him out and I cut it open on a barbed wire fence and it left this scar on my hand.

But when I look at that scar, 30 years later, it just reminds me of the time that I got to spin with this guy and at least as much of a 10-year-old can try to help this guy out and how much it meant to him that I was coming over there

and trying to help him out. So it's a little bit cheesy of a story but it resonated with the boys of like what's more important in life. It's not the things you accumulate. It's not what you, what you have in your closet. It's not what you have in your driveway.

It's the impact that you leave on other people. And a great way to do that is through service. So that was the talk. And what we always do is we try talks have to be short. Some of these kids are pretty little. So the tension span four minutes, seven minutes tops. You got like go. You got to make an impact.

We try to pair the talk with whatever the activity is going to be. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn't. But it was a service talk. there was a blind lady in our church who obviously can't do a lot of things around the house for herself. So we went over to her house and we did a whole bunch of yard work, cleared the backyard, replaced some sections of fences. And the boys just loved it.

They absolutely loved it. So that's kind of the theme of it is we have a virtue or a talk that we want to give them, something to think about. And then we try to pair it with some type of skill. You know, we did a talk on stewardship and what it means for a man to take care. of your family, take care of the land, provide for your family. One of our good buddies runs a tree clearing company. I just happened to have 120 foot oak tree that came down in the last storm that we had. So he brings all these way overpowered chainsaws over. And we got a bunch of little maniacs

running around with, you know, expert grade steel 90cc chainsaws chopping up this tree under our supervision. So the boys dig it. They love the activity to the top. really resonate with a lot of them. I don't know, half the times I get home with my sons and I'm like, you know what we talk about? But we're trying. Knife. Yeah, we talked about a knife and you giving me that knife one day.

But no, the boys, it does resonate with the boys and most importantly it gives us time as dads to very deliberately spend with our sons teaching them, which we've all got busy schedules. And if you're not deliberate about it, sometimes those things just don't happen. And then you've got the rugby club, the boxing club, what's on? Yeah, it's that all about it.

Yeah, rugby club actually got a text right started just right before I came on about rugby club is about to kick off again. So some dads in the community, the school that our kids go to have a rugby team, but then we also wanted to build kind of a community-based rugby club that we could put together a big enough roster to one day to compete against some of the school or some of the clubs that are up in like the D.C. area. So a couple of dads started it up. I don't know a lot about rugby.

I lived in a tiny town in Texas where rugby was surprise, surprise, not a thing. So I'm learning about it. And then I just help out as much as I possibly can with the rugby club. You know, you give me a drill to run. I can run that drill all day long with the boys. But again, it's just a community of dads that are some of them, most of them have played rugby growing up, at least to the high school level. How come there's kids like adults that played rugby as kids? Yeah.

Where? Yeah. East Coast. Most of them are East Coast guys. Huh. Yeah. And it is the, if you've never been big on the rugby environment, it's, in my opinion, after seeing lots of different sports, it's the best sport, team sport that a boy can play.

And here's why. Good coverage for yourself. You're about to just, you're about to get wrestling and jiu-jitsu. Yeah, yeah, you did good. Yeah. Team sport. And the reason why I think that is. multifaceted, but the prime one is it is the epitome of a team sport.

The entire philosophy of rugby is I have to hold on to the ball just long enough to take the hit from you so that I can dish it off to my teammate last minute and hopes that he can make a move. So there's no selfishness in it. And there's no, it doesn't matter how good you are at rugby. There's a lot of players on the field. There's no one person that's going to take over a rugby match. There's no Michael Jordan.

The best rugby player in the world is not going to take that match over. It is a thousand percent a team effort, and it's just a grind. You're just grinding it out yard after yard after yard. You get hit. Doesn't matter how hard. You've got to get back up. You got to be there to support your teammate. And the whole philosophy of the game is, I'm taking the hit so that you can get a couple

extra yards. It's also exceptionally respectful. There's no ego allowed on the field whatsoever. there's two people that are allowed to even communicate with a referee and it's the captain from each team anybody else says a word to the ref done off the field and if you communicate with the referee and it's not in a respectful manner yes sir no sir can i talk to you about this sir same thing you're going to get booted off of the field so you've got all of these just savages getting after it you know injuries galore blood everywhere and then they're just being super respectful at the same time

they're grinding it out against each other on the pitch. The second that the game's over, both teams are hanging out talking about, hey, it was a great hit. So I think for a boy, best team sport you can play because there's nothing about that game that's about you.

Everything is about the team. That's good to know. It definitely is growing in America. Yeah. And I don't know if that's because part of it is, you know, there's some negativity around football right now with the CTE. Yeah.

Echo Charles. CTE. How familiar are you with rugby? Not very. Not very. I did. Actually, I did a video. This is rugby league.

Yeah. It's different in Australia with the Gold Coast Titans. It was actually the relationship between Jiu-Jitsu and rugby. And the Titans are taking Jiu-Jitsu from one of Hicks and Gracie's, black belts, black belt, named Jason Robic. And he's teaching the rugby guys jiu-jitsu, and it helps. Because the big part of it, when you get tackled to get back up, real quick is like a big like advantage if you can do it quick so they do all these drills is really cool do you think there's more head trauma in football or in rugby um i i don't know but it would seem

like it would be football because you have helmets on so you're less like yeah like in rugby it's like you're not going to go head to head on purpose you know they purposely you can't high tackle in rugby i know you're not supposed to high tackle and even in the NFL anymore but which still happens but in rugby anything above basically the the upper chest line you're not you're not supposed to high tackle and is illegal. But they spend a ton of time drilling proper tackling technique where it's almost like they're just drilling single and double legs over and over and over again. It's head to the side, control the legs, all those things.

So there's less head injury there because they're purposely teaching them how to wrap and tackle. Also, it's very rare, it happens, but it's very rare that in a game that's multiple times, you know, full sprint contact very rarely happens in rugby. Most of the time it's I've got a little bit of steam up. I get popped by you. Maybe you don't get me. Jocco's right there.

Boom, he takes me down. So very rarely is it I'm running full speed. You're running full speed and then we're just going to see what happens. Yeah, yeah. So there's some of that too. Yeah, for sure. And I know you had an unfortunate incident with the boys on a hike. And, you know, what happened with that?

What lessons did you take away? Yeah. Yeah, so our school does a fall hike. So, again, we're blessed enough to live in the Shenandole Valley. So we're right in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And during the fall, it's got to be one of the prettiest places in the states. Everything is turning colors, you know, the trees. Everything looks like a Norman Rockwell painting, basically.

A lot of people from the East Coast flood our town for three weeks during the fall to go, we call them leaf lookers. They just come to check out the foliage in the mountains. Like, that's how beautiful it is. is people from all over the country will come down. So our school takes advantage of it. And they do what we call fall hike, which is the entire school goes, but they break the hikes up into basically how capable the kids are.

So the kindergartners go on a hike, a hike. And then the high schoolers go on a hike, and middle school goes on a hike. But the high school hike is a legit hike. I want to say it's something like nine or 14 miles there and back. So it's a legit hike. And the parents, as many parents as can, are encouraged to come on this.

So it's a great event for the school. It's something we all look forward to doing. I was not there for this fall hike. I was meeting with the company. But one of the dads that did go was just like a pillar of our community. Been living there forever, a whole bunch of kids. Nobody had a bad word to say about this guy. He was on the board for the school, just one of those guys that did everything he possibly

could for his kids and for the community. And he was on the hike. And he was kind of bringing up the rear with a couple of people. and I don't know what the initial thing was if he was dehydrated or if he had a heart issue, but he went unconscious and fell over. And I think when he fell over, he hit his head. He hit his face for sure because there was a lot of blood. And there was a couple of girls from the school that were with him that he was hiking with.

And, you know, they try to respond to him. He kind of comes back to, but it's a horrifying situation for the, them, even as it is right now with him being responsive because his face is all cut up, there's blood everywhere, and he was responsive for a little bit, and then he started to go unresponsive. So one of the girls runs up, makes contact. Some of the parents come back down, and they start to try to help him out, but he's completely unresponsive at this point.

So grace to God, they were in a place where they could actually get cell service because you don't hardly get any service on this high. We're talking like back country into the Blue Ridge Mountains. So they get some cell service. They call 911 and 911. 911 is now trying to respond, but this is the mountains. They're very long ways away. So about 20 or 30 minutes go by before the EMS ever make it to the base of the mountain

to start the hike, but I think they were five miles into the hike. So they've got to get all the equipment, all that stuff up there. and at the same time, one of the parents, his wife was there with him too. One of his parents, one of the parents had called the parish priest because they were kind of like, he might not come out of this one. So EMS finally gets there. They're trying to get the equipment up the mountain, but I don't know how to say this without being just blunt.

They were not in shape. And they could not make it up the mountain with the equipment. So a bunch of the high school boys started running down the mountain and then grabbing equipment from them and then running back of the mountain of the equipment, running back down and just shuttling this stuff back and forth. And a couple of times when they ran down, the EMS were just literally sitting there taking a breather during this situation. So some of those boys put in 21, 25 miles that day just shuttling stuff back up.

And we're not talking like flat. We're talking in the mountains, shuttling stuff back up and forth. Paris priest gets there, total stud, sprints up the mountain in his cassock, gets there, is able to issue last rights, but unfortunately the father passed away. And there was a lot of, I mean, it's just a horrible situation all around, but there was a lot of frustration, obviously, because of how everything went down with the EMS, all that different stuff.

So, tight-in-a-community, the community definitely felt the loss of this man, felt, you know, the outpouring of love for his family. But there was some resources brought into the school to try to help people kind of talk through this and deal with this. And I wrote a letter to some of the boys, or all the boys that I knew were involved and just told them that, hey, I don't know exactly

what you're going through, but we've all dealt with loss before being in our profession and let me just give you some things that I think will come in handy for you to think about. And the main thing that I wanted him to take away was it was good, good that they were there. You know, if they weren't there, And they weren't able to shuttle that stuff up back and forth.

I mean, think about what a horrible situation that is for that family already. His wife, his daughter was on the hike too. Those boys being there was a big relief for them. And then another big thing that I wanted him to understand was, I think a lot of them were dealing with, is it okay to be frustrated? You know, is it okay to be upset at some of the EMS? And I was like, hey, is it okay to be frustrated at the situation?

Yes, it's okay to be frustrated at the situation. But don't dwell on it. Don't take it out on them. You can't control that situation. You know, you did what you did. And I was basically just trying to as much as I could from a detached perspective, just reshape their thought process if they needed it into it was good that you were there. Like, don't be sad that you were there, which I don't know if they were. Don't be sad that you were there. It was a good thing that you were there in a tragic situation to support this family. It would have horrible day. It would have been that much worse if you guys wouldn't have been there doing what you did for that family. But just when you live in a community like ours, I mean, that leaves a big hole,

big hole. Did you take his place on the school board? I don't know if I took his place. I think they were already going to invite some more people to the board. And I was asked to be on the board. Another big lesson from that I told those boys was, you know, being prepared is a choice. You're not always going to be an 18-year-old athlete stud. You could be a 50-year-old athlete. You could be a 50-year-old stud, but that's a choice. You know, when you graduate from this school, go to college, maybe you play sport. Maybe you don't go to college.

Like, no one's going to force you to work out anymore. And those EMS members that couldn't make it up a mountain, they didn't make it up mountain because they just weren't prepared. Flip that with our priest who's 50, I'm going to get it wrong and I apologize, Father. I don't want to call you out for being older than you actually are. But he's mid-50s and he sprinted the entire way up there. So I was like, you guys had a great example of a 55-year-old guy who sprinted was completely

ready for that situation. And then you had the people that should have been ready for that situation that weren't even capable of making it up. So it's a choice whether you're prepared or not. And it's not going to be any easier than right now. You know, 10 years from now, if you're not working, if you're not working out, if you're not putting in the miles and putting in the hours, you know, you could find yourself being that situation that you're frustrated at, that could be you 10 years from now.

That could be you 20 years from now. You'd have no one to blame but yourself because you weren't prepared. What's the priest's protocol workout? Well, he's one of my, he gets after it. He's one of my sparring partners for boxing. so he's in phenomenal shape. We went 30 minutes one time without a break because he controls all the sparring.

Like 30 minute or 30 minute round? 30 minute round. 30 minute round. I was in the hurt locker, but he was just bouncing around all over the place. Like it was no big deal. In my defense, the volume of punches he was throwing, father was a lot less than the volume of punches

that I was throwing. But he's super in shape. He runs every day. He bikes a lot. He coaches lacrosse for one of the schools there. He, I think if he's not helping somebody out in the community, he's spinning his energy working out or doing something physical. So he's total stud.

Total stud. Do you guys have a code over at the forge? What's it called the forge? The forge, yeah. You guys have a code? You know, we don't have a code. We definitely need a code, though, don't we? You definitely need a code.

Yeah. I was getting asked the other day about. about the Warrior Kid books. And one of the things that I talked about was the fact that in the mid 2000s, in the SEAL teams, we had some discipline problems pop up and guys doing dumb things. And look, we've had plenty of guys do dumb things since then.

But there was one of the things that came from that was, you know, all these different military units. They all have, and this is going back to, you know, the samurai and the Vikings and the knights. they all had their codes that they lived by. And we, in the SEAL teams, we didn't really have that. We had a bunch of little sayings, but they didn't really guide your, you know,

they didn't really guide your behavior in many cases. And so there was an attempt made. They got a bunch of us together to San Clemente Island. And I was one of the people that went, and it was a bunch of people from different ranks, different, you know, different commands, different coasts. Just so they brought in a pretty widespread variety of people. and we ended up writing down the seal ethos.

And, you know, it was, is it perfect no, but at a minimum, it at least captures some really important stuff for the seals. And, you know, so I kind of watched that. I watched how that happened. And I watched it go out into the community. And, you know, just like the patches and everything else, that it was very top down.

And so the way it was received in the beginning was a little bit, and you didn't get it until what, 2008? So you probably were still seeing like, oh, see you, O, the CO Ethos thing, you probably were still hearing that kind of thing. Because, you know, you're getting something imposed on you,

and we don't like to have things imposed on us. And I think that that code, the first time that I felt like, oh, there's some traction coming there, and that's when I went to a memorial service and they read it. And you start listening to those words, and you go, okay,

I'm starting to understand where this comes from and why we have this. But, you know, when I was writing the Warrior Kid books, you think about it, you know, there used to be various codes that were issued to kids, whether they got those codes from church, you know, whether it was the Ten Commandments, whether they got it from the Pledge of Allegiance, whether they got it from the Boy Scouts, there was a place they were going to get these, this code to live by. And you can make a lot of decisions. You can make a lot of decisions if you've got a code. If you've got some protocol in your life that you follow, you can make a lot of decisions and you can make a lot of good decisions. So, you know, that was one of my main goals when I wrote the first Warrior Kid book is give kids a code that they can live by. And by the way, in the Warrior Kid book, it's encouraged that you write your own code.

It's not, hey, here's the code that you should do. use. In fact, the warrior kid code is what the kid writes after he reads the other codes and after his uncle tells him, all right, dude, what's your code? What is the warrior kid code? So that might be an idea, a little exercise that you guys could do, come up with your own forge code. And again, you know, you'd be surprised how many decisions you can make in life if you've got a good code to live by the warrior kid code the warrior kid wakes up early in the morning the warrior kid studies to learn and gain knowledge and ask questions if they don't understand the warrior kid trains hard exercises and eats right to be strong and fast and healthy the warrior kid trains to know how

to fight so they can stand up to bullies and protect the weak the warrior kid treats people with respect doesn't judge them and helps out others whenever whenever possible the warrior Kid keeps things neat and is always prepared and ready for action. The Warrior Kid stays humble, controls their ego, and stays calm. Warrior Kids do not lose their tempers. The Warrior Kid works hard, saves money, is frugal, doesn't waste things, and it always does their best. The Warrior Kid is always thankful for both the challenges and opportunities in life that

help them become a smarter, stronger, and healthier warrior kid. I am a warrior kid. So you get to like, you can make some serious decisions based on those protocols right there. It's going to help you a lot. So that's the kind of thing. You know, when I think of,

when you were telling me about that, I think, oh, you get these kids to come up with a little code, little seven rules or the five rules of the forged, or you take forged and you say, F is for fighting. We know how to fight, you know. O is for opportunity.

We see our, you know, you come up with some cool stuff. There's a interesting little snapshot of what drives boys is we do it first Friday every month. People have lots of different activities going on. Not everybody can make every Friday. So your attendance goes all over the place. Whenever we have an event that's got an edge of violence to it, maximum turnout. Maximum turnout.

Boxing was the one where we had the most kids that we've ever had. Most kids, I don't know if it was the dad's driving that train. like, hey, boys, we're going, or if it was the boys that were like, let's get after it, it was the one where we had the most people show up. The second biggest one we did was middle of winter, had a bunch of different ice buckets outside, and it was, we're all going to spend X amount of time in the ice bucket. Dad and his son at the same time, or for me I had three sons. So it was dad and three sons at the same time.

Anything where they feel like they were challenged, or there's a little hint of violence there, like they're maximum participation. Some of the ones where it's, you know, stewardship. We're going to learn to do caretaking of livestock. People still come. Little Johnny can't make it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, we got a little family event.

But you tell them we're going to lace it up and the kids are going to fight. And even if you've never had any experience, everyone's doing two minutes. Everyone was there. Everyone was there. Yeah, that shows you that there's a little intrinsic thing that we owe that many many young men have. We were talking to us on one of these recent podcasts just like when it comes to recruiting

and the lack, the trouble that they've had the military recruiting people. And it's, you know, when I was a little kid, I wanted to carry a machine gun. So if you showed me the recruiting thing that said you get to carry a machine gun, sign up over here, cool, just give me the piece of paper. I'm signing it.

And then some of the recruiting efforts recently have been like not, aimed at a young kid that wants to carry machine gun. They're aimed at, so when you're a young kid and you want to carry a machine gun and you see some commercial or some advertisement that has nothing to do with carrying a machine gun and being a warrior, you're like, well, I guess that's not my place. Yeah. So. Yeah.

Well, the 80s ads and the early 90s ads, the Marines, you've never had better. You've never had better military recruiting advertisements and that. I mean, you felt like watching that kid, watching that video as a kid, that if you signed up, you were going to be a one-man army. Yeah. Is what it made you feel like. Yeah. So that's why your community, you're the forge, you tell them they're going to get it on.

It's like, oh, yeah, we'll be there. We'll be there. And that's awesome. And, you know, it's interesting because, you know, you mentioned off or you start off talking about the idea of service and choosing to serve, you know, obviously you and I served in the military. and when you look at these kids now and you look at your military experience, which was similar to my military experience because we both basically fought in the big giant

20-year global war on terrorism. Eight years ago, you lost JJ Feining. These wars cost over $2 trillion. Almost 7,000 killed in action, over 50,000 wounded in action. And, and, you know, those numbers, we just throw them out there, 7,000 killed, you know, 50,000 wounded. But those, for us that were in the military, those aren't just numbers. These are people. And there's so many of those people, so many of those individual humans.

And when you think about, you know, the next generation and the service and what we went through. And I know that this gets asked, I know it certainly gets asked to me sometimes, you know, when I'm out in public, I know that people on the team and the Escalon Front team that were in the military get asked this question. But, you know, it's the question of, of was it worth it? And how do you feel, how do you address that with your kids? Your kids might be a little young right now. How are you thinking you're going to address those things with your kids when they get old enough? Yeah. How's your oldest right now? How old is this 13? Yeah, 13, 12, 10. That's the boys and then the two girls a little bit younger. Yeah. I had a lot of people ask me the same thing recently too, and I don't know if it was, you know,

some of the discussions with this election cycle with some of the personalities, they're really looking at that question. You know, was it worthwhile? And I don't know that I have the answer total, but I know I'm really proud of what we did over there and the effort that we put forward. the impact that it made, at least on the people's lives that we were involved in.

Take Mosul, for an example. I can't even, I know we can talk about whatever on this podcast. I can't begin to tell you, because I don't want to talk about it, what I saw and what our guys saw ISIS doing to civilians inside of Iraq and inside of Syria. It's things that we don't even want to believe that human beings are capable of doing to each other. So knowing that we played a small part, our troop did, in ridding the world of that organization, I could not be the more proud of that.

But then you look at the total cost of everything and, you know, I can only focus on the things that I can focus on, the things that I know that we affected. And I know that for those people, I think we left them in a better place. And for my kids asking that question, that's kind of what I would tell them is you don't, sign up to serve, thinking that you're going to control every decision that's going to happen to you inside of the military. It's a large organization and you've got to trust that people are making the right decisions. All you can do is control your actions on the ground and make sure that you're doing the right things for the right reasons and that you're protecting the people to your right and to your left

and making a difference. And I think based on what I saw all of my tours, even in Afghanistan, where hindsight now, like, it's in a pretty bad spot for everybody that was there. But for a period of time, you know, we gave them some things that they didn't have. I don't know if that makes it worthwhile. But I know I'm proud of what our guys accomplished while they were over there. Yeah, the, you know, clearly that's the same kind of attitude I have of, you know, being, especially in Ramadi in 2006, like the civilian populace was being subjected to, you know, just abject subhuman terroristic behavior from the insurgents.

And the fact that we were able to be there and able to rid that city of insurgents and give the people in that city the opportunity to live normal lives. And again, it ended up, you know, I mean, we would have to do a full assessment. It's a lot easier to do a full assessment of where Afghanistan's at right now because Afghanistan clearly has gone back to the dark ages of the Taliban and it's just horrible to see. Iraq and I just saw another, I just saw a news story. I haven't fact checked it yet, but they're passing a law that brings the age of consent and marriage in Iraq down to nine years old. So that's not a positive sign for the girls there. But I know that they at one point were living in a terrible situation and we were able to help them.

And then on top of that, of course, we were thankfully able to overwatch the soldiers and Marines on the streets and keep hundreds of those soldiers and Marines alive. So same thing. Like I know that what we did in our little share of the task, we did what we could. I think about what do we learn as a nation. You know, when I look at the mistakes that we made in Vietnam specifically, just because I think I'm more familiar with that war, and clearly it was very devastating for the country. And I wonder what lessons, you know,

how do we, how there are such obvious lessons that we should have taken away from Vietnam and we didn't and how short is our memory going to be this time you know and where here we are with the world kind of in a when one of the worldwide is horrible right now like you think about what's going on in Ukraine in Israel like these are terrible situations there's escalation I mean the escalation in those two areas of operations is both of those could go completely out of control very quickly. And how well, you know,

what are we doing about it? How are we going to, how are we going to handle these situations? What lessons are we going to forget about? At what point do we become the catalyst for escalation instead of the catalyst for de-escalation? And it's, I really hope that,

well, friends, we got a new administration coming in. Obviously, Tulsi, who is, I know her personally, and she's, I have a lot of trust and confidence in her. She's just a great person with a great attitude. And then I know some of the other people involved in the administration as well. And, you know, we've spent a lot of time.

We spent a lot of time with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., what a smart and knowledge. He is and Vivek I've met him and spent time with him and again these are people that I just I hope that they recognize lessons that we should have learned from Vietnam lessons that we hopefully have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan and we can move forward in a in a way that makes this sacrifices from all these wars worthwhile as we move to a place of peace and not a place of war. There's a guy we know I was thinking about this before, you know, knowing that you were coming on, and we had talked about this a little bit.

And one of the things that I think about when I think about wars, I think of a guy named Joshua. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. He is, you know, definitely one of the heroes of the Civil War and also a, a guy that I try and read as much as I can now, just a very eloquent speaker who I think the way he spoke and the way he wrote about things was very powerful and he captured things that I think he captures him in a way

even though it was a civil war and post-Civil War. But he gave a speech and I think it ties into everything that we're talking about. You know, when you think about what we did, you know, as a nation and then what we did, did as as teammates and service members. He said this, we rose in soul above the things which even the declaration of independence

pronounces the inalienable rights of human nature. For the securing of which governments are instituted among men, happiness, liberty, life. We laid on the altar of offering or committed to the furies of destruction. So he's saying they're like, We looked at the things that we're guaranteed, or the things that the Declaration of Independence says these are your rights as a human being,

and we said, no, we don't care about them. We're going to put our sacrifice. We're going to sacrifice happiness, sacrifice liberty, and possibly sacrifice our lives for this, while our minds were lifted up to a great thought and our hearts swelled to its measure. So we're performing above our station as mere human beings. We were beckoned by the vision of destiny. We saw our country moving forward, charged with the sacred trust of man.

We believed in its glorious career, the power of high aims and strong purposes. And I think it's important there. You know, we believed in the glorious career of our country. We weren't, you know, we believed that we were doing the right things. And, you know, sometimes I'll get asked that question of, you know, what would you do if you were ordered to do something that you weren't, that wasn't the right thing to do? I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. If we were told to do something that didn't make sense, I wouldn't do it. If we were told to do something that was immoral, wouldn't do it. And that's the way most of the people in the military are, the vast majority. And by the, by most, I mean 99%. But when you're there, you believe in what you're doing. If we didn't believe in it, we're not doing it. The power of high aims and strong purpose, the continuity of great endeavor, the onward, upward path of history to God. Every man felt that he gave himself to and belonged to something beyond time and above place something which could not die. These are the reasons.

Not fixed in the form of things, but formative of things. reasons of the soul why we fought for the union. So when I hear that, he's, look, he's talking about the Civil War, but so much of that to me applies to my thoughts looking back at the wars. We did our duty, right? We did our duty. Like what you teach those young men, which is to put others above yourself, that's what we did. And we saw our friends, we saw our brothers, and we saw our teammates do that.

and we helped the people on the ground as we talked about. And hopefully we learned lessons that can then be applied to our country. And I think this line about not fixed in the form of things, right, not fixed in the form of things, meaning it's not an there's not an undeniable reason why we fought. It's not an undeniable. You can't say, well, we fought because of this thing right here. So it's not fixed in the form of things. but he says but formative of things so it's like what did we learn from it we did it how did it make us

better how do we become better from what we went through um and i think that's just the way things work when you when you think of the idea that what we do is formative of who we are as individuals, what we do is formative of who we are. And our country, what our country does is formative of who our country is. And there's going to be mistakes and there's going to be things that happened. But as long as they form you into a better person and a better nation, then I think we have to move forward with that attitude. The lessons that we learn from it. And then there's another thing from Chamberlain.

He says there is a way of losing that is finding when soul over masters sense when the noble and divine self overcomes the lower self when duty and honor and love immortal things bid the mortal perish. So there's things that they're more important than life. It's only when man supremely gives that he supremely finds. that was your sacrifice, that is your reward. So although, you know, we and those of us in the military, those of us that stepped up and served, when you serve, when you give, that's when you find. So it's what you talked about earlier.

When you step up and you give that your reward, you make the sacrifice, your reward is what you find. And so, you know, as I look back at, again, the idea of the wars that we fought, I want to make sure that we remember what it taught us. And we utilize that as individuals and as communities and as a nation. We use what we've been through to make us better. To where I'm at on it, this particular stage. always trying to keep an open mind learn more but chamberlain was uh he was a smart guy yeah and he was a hell of a writer so yeah um yeah man raising kids selling steak teaching leadership

pretty good spot to be in not a bad place to be not a bad place to be yeah being able to take all these lessons and impart them on as many people as you can. You know, you're not just your own kids, but the kids in the community and then companies that we get to work with. You know, that right there is a huge benefit. The fact that we get to take these lessons that we learned and pass them on. It's so important. And I believe that's part of, you know, part of this whole thing that Chamberlain was talking about. You said it at the beginning. You know, the blessing of this echelon front for me is I go and I get to pass some of these lessons learned on to people who are really thirsty for them. But every time I do it, I come home, a better husband.

I come home, a better father. I still make plenty of mistakes, but I can't be up there talking to these different individuals about this and not just thinking to myself, I messed that up. I mess that up last week. And now I've got to go and, you know, take some ownership of that. So you said the service thing, you know, it's great to be able to be there and help these different companies and help these different individuals. But man, selfishly, it's hugely beneficial for me too. Gosh, so many people have said to me, man, I wish I had that book when I was younger. I'm always like, me too.

Dude, me too. All these books. I wish I had them when I was younger. Yeah. And, and here's another tangentially. You ever had somebody ask you, what advice would you give yourself if you were 20? years old yeah have you ever had somebody asking you that question that somebody asked me that question and you know what I said I said it doesn't matter because I wouldn't

elicit you know what I'm saying unfortunately there's some lessons that only life can teach you and I and I really hope and I actually I know I know because I talk these people all time you talk these people all time we have figured out a way to convey these lessons in a manner that people can actually understand And I think that's, you know, that's one of the reasons why we've been successful is because we've figured out a way. And look, you got to convey to an adult. It's going to be in a certain manner. Going to convey it to kids.

It's going to be in a warrior kid manner. You know, it's one of the reasons in the book. It's not the dad. Why isn't it the dad? There's a couple reasons why it's not the dad. One of the reasons it's not the dad because not everyone has a dad, right? And I didn't want that kid to go, well, gee, so I don't have a dad. And the other reason is kids don't listen to it.

of their dads. There's always my, you know, my kid, by the time he was eight years old, he was way smarter than I was, knew way more than I did. Of course. But they always listen to Uncle Jake. You want to give you a real world example of that?

Let's go. Do you think I talk with all of my kids, but specifically the boys, and it's not a gender thing, it's my boys who are older. With my boys about the importance of working out? Yes. Do you think I talk to him about the important

of eating well and taking care of their responsibilities around the farm all the time. The boys reread the Warrior Kid book. I come downstairs at my normal time somewhere between 5, 5.30. No one's downstairs. It's my time. Round six, usually the two or three kids are down. Nobody's there. I look outside the lights and our pole barn are on, which is where the gym is.

I go out there, my boys are shirtless, doing pull-ups and doing push-ups. Hell yeah. I've told them this repeatedly that they should be doing this. Jake steps in and tells it and all of a sudden, you know, I don't know if their mom would approve of this,

but like Megadeth was blaring in the pole barn and they're just crushing the deck of cards workout. Yeah. It's like, check. It works. And that's the same thing that happens, you know, I get this feedback from companies we go work with, you know,

the CEO will be like, this is the same stuff I tell them. They just don't want to hear it for me anymore. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, it happens. It happens. That external detached element comes in and tells you what's going on that you don't have a little relationship with. We were terrible about this in the seal teams because we would always, no one in the seal teams could be good enough to teach shooting in the seal teams. Because I could never say, you know, Sean, can you show me, you know, can you show me that draw again, help me out?

Nope. Nope. My ego will not allow me. You have to be some civilian expert. And then I can, then you can tell me. And same thing with parachuting. And same thing with fighting. It's like, no, there's not enough guys in the seal teams that are black belts in

Jiu-Jitsu that did Muay that were professional boxers or golden glove boxers. No, none of those can't learn from any of them. We got to hire somebody to come and show us some karate, right? It's like, no, totally ridiculous. So we try and do that. That's why Uncle Jake is a pretty powerful figure with the kids. but passing these lessons on that's to me one of the best things that we can do as as military members and to serve you know our country serve our communities to the best of our ability now that we're

retired old guys thanks and that's the way it goes um we good is that is that up to speed for right now i think so i think literally everything that we got going on we just talked about at least all the good stuff that's what i like me here bad stuff Right on. Any questions? No, I don't actually. All right. Oddly, because shoot, I know Sean Glass.

We had questions. I call them up. What up? Where are we at? Where are my stakes? Or whatever. Yeah. Or whatever.

Hey, so we're training Jiu Jitsu. Are the kids training Jiu Jitsu? So I was talking with Echle about this. They have, we're trying to control the schedule. So they have spring sports, fall sport. Fall sport for them. They all play soccer. It's awesome right now because all the boys are on the same soccer team for school.

and then my daughter plays for the rec league. Youngest daughter's too young. Spring is rugby season and then my daughter's playing soccer again. So wintertime, summertime is the only time that we can fit in combatives. I try to walk a line of not forcing them to do it. And it's tough because we know why we want them to do it.

I don't want them to do it for any reason that's not great for them. It builds a huge amount of confidence. It's good for you to know how to defend yourself and to defend other people. I can't convey that. It's tough for an 11-year-old to listen to that and have the perspective to go,

my dad's trying to give me a gift. I didn't have that when I was growing up. You know, we didn't live in a little, anybody town. There was one Shodokan Karate place that I went to for three months and then it closed down because it wasn't enough Shodokanin going on in course of Canada.

So I never had that, so I want to give my kids that gift. A couple of them are down and we're trained, and then a couple of them wants some downtime. So any advice? I'm going to give it to you right now. Yeah. So I'm going to give you echelon front advice.

So at echelon front, we talk about the difference between formal training and informal training. So what most people think of, Echo Charles, when they think of training, they think of, all right, we're new training for our company. We need to take four days off.

We need to bring in an expert. We need to sit in a classroom all day. We need to take notes. We need to be presented with a manual or a pamphlet or something. And that's what training is. We think of military training, okay, you're going to go to this school, you're going to go through this leadership stuff, or you're going to go through this weapon system, and you're going to learn this weapon system. And it's going to take three weeks to learn this weapon system.

And once you've got this weapon system learned, then you'll be, you know, ready to use this system. That's, that's formal training. Informal training is, hey, echo, have you ever shot this weapon system before? Hey, let me give you a quick rundown. Oh, okay. Well, hey, you're going to be here tomorrow because we're actually using it on the range. Oh, okay, cool. I'll let you shoot a couple times.

And then two weeks later, I'm like, oh, hey, I got to break down and clean that weapon system. Do you want to help me? And boom, you get to do it. And over a period of six months, you're actually better trained than the guy that we sent to the two-week school on the weapon system. So what I would recommend, and this is actually a perfect solution for you and your family because you have the pole barn. You've got room. You can get a couple mats. We've got them.

You got mats already. So what you can do is informal training. What you can do is, hey, for warm up today, we're going to be. going to escape them out. You know enough basic Jiu-Jitsu. Escape them out, arm-lock. Do you know enough basic J-Jitsu? Say, hey, to warm up, hey, maybe we're not even doing J-Jitsu. Maybe we're just saying, hey, we're going to do hip escapes. We're going to do movements. And occasionally, we're going to, oh, let me just show you guys an arm-lock. You show a kid in arm-lock for 10 minutes. You show a kid in an arm-lock for 10 minutes as a way to warm up and you do that for a month.

That kid's going to have a freaking pretty solid arm lock. You show them how to do the rear naked choke for five minutes their kids gonna have a pretty solid re naked choke you know for five minutes a day for so I would recommend and also then you do little challenges like hey your kids did they ever shoot the basketball yeah oh yeah oh yeah do they toss the football oh yeah do okay so they they toss the rugby so they're you know they're gonna be outside they're gonna be be doing things hey what this what's what you're gonna do today you get the mount position you got to get escape you got to escape and you got to grab this you know uh tennis ball over here that's on the other side of the mat and just do some little games and if you do this informal training

by the time these kids recognize because what will happen is at some juncture someone's gonna push him on the schoolyard and they're gonna do a double leg because that's another thing you'll drill a little bit of they're gonna do a double leg and they're gonna take him down to the ground well they actually they're just gonna do a rugby tackle yeah because they already know how to do so they're just gonna grab their legs like they do in rugby and then they're gonna be on the ground and the kid's gonna turn her way and they're gonna put a rear naked joke and be like oh I'm never gonna get picked on the stuff that my dad was trying to show me this magic

it's magic and I'm gonna learn more of this magic so informal training and this goes for all parents a lot of times kids like you know what what age should my kid start jujitsu zero when your kid is laying in their crib and they can't walk you can start to pass their guard a little bit you know what I'm saying echo Charles and it becomes a little game when your kid can't walk but they can ride and you can have them mount you and you can let them get that movement and the stability little informal training that's my recommendation dig it so when you're doing jiu jitsu when they're working out boxing rugby the whole nine yards they're going to need fuel i recommend jocco fuel for all of us uh check out joccofuel.com we got we got protein we got energy drinks

we got ready to drink energy drinks it's wintertime and you know what that That means hot chocolate milk. This is, this isn't a, this is a miracle. It's miracle. Have you, have you ever had hot chocolate milk? No, I had never heated up. Okay, so heat up the milk first, heat up the milk first and then add it and then actually this is another thing.

You ever, you ever doubted a piece of technology? Doubted. Doubted a piece of technology and you just like that is stupid. It happened to me with wireless earphones for your phone. Like for so long I was like I got to carry a nut you got to charge this thing this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard I just have a wire It's no big deal and then finally I forget who I think JP was like dude they're freaking awesome and I was like really? I got him I was like I'm an idiot My wife has this little thing It's like a little stirring machine. I guess

It's a long slender metal pole with a little spring thing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah You would not think that that could whip up in a mug. It whips up chocolate milk. So heat up the milk, put a scoop of chocolate milk in. And you can try the other flavors, but I'm telling you the chocolate milk, put that little wire thing in a and then if you really go, if you're going the distance, my wife makes heavy whipping cream

or she makes whipped cream with monk fruit. So it's sugar-free whipped cream. And it's that right there is the combo. You can't beat it. This is glorious. This is one of the most epic things ever. You think I'm kidding, man. I know I've done that exactly thing.

Not the, not the muck fruit. No, no, but the whole deal, same tool, everything. Oh, next level. I got you, fam, I got you. It's good, right? Yeah, it's good, very good. Miracle, yeah, that's a fun way to say. Yeah, for sure.

Okay, something that tastes delicious and it gives you protein. Hey, look, we're doing great work. We're there, with our mulks over here, Christmas time. Heated up all day. Joccofuel.com. Come and get it. Get yourself some chocolate milk.

Get yourself protein. Get yourself energy drink. Get yourself joint warfare, super krill. I met a woman at the 434. Sure. She was like, I couldn't run. And now I'm doing burpees. Joint warfare, super krill.

All day. She was probably 52. too. And quite honestly, I'm rounding that down because I'm trying to be polite because I don't know. She wasn't.

You know what I'm saying. You never know. But here she was. She said she couldn't run. And now she's not only running, she's doing burpees. So check these things out. Joccofuel.com.

Also, they're at WawaW. They're at Walmart. Are you in a Walmart before? Yeah. Yeah. Good thing. You can get the protein at Walmart. So go get the protein.

You can also get it at Wawwat, vitamin shop, GNC, military commissaries, A-fees, Hannaford dash stores in Maryland wakefern shop right HEB down in Texas oh HB oh yeah that was our grocery store growing up HEB HB is CETS CES LOSCO Fuel oh yeah it's it's awesome we go into HEB down there and they set up like the most awesome uh displays mm and they're just fired up so HB is a great store and then same thing with Meyer up in the Midwest oh yeah very very uh hyped and then

Weggmans. Yeah, out on the East Coast. Right by us. Oh, you got a right. 30 miles away. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I was actually there getting some stuff for this trip before we rolled out. Okay. Well, there you go. Weggmans. We're Wegmans. Harris Teeter.

And then, you know, Lifetime Fitness and Shields and then a bunch of small gyms everywhere. So get, go get yourself some jaco fuel. Also, when you're doing things in America, you should be doing them while you're wearing

American-made clothing, i.e. OriginUSA.com. There's no reason. There's literally no reason. I'm not going to go through the slavery thing. No, no. Look, we fought the Civil War.

I talked about Chamberlain. We thought we ended slavery. And we did here in America. It's not over in the world. There's more slavery now than there was then. You've heard this stat. You know where they are? Making your jeans in China.

That's where they are. Literal slaves. So don't support that. Support America. Support the American economy. Support the American farmer, which Sean talked about. Isn't it easy life being a farmer?

Not at all. Okay. It's not an easy life. How about we give them some support? How about we use American cotton? Yep. Well, there. So whatever you need to wear, workout clothes, we got you.

Jiu-Jit-Tis, we got you. Jeans, we got you. We got you. What do they call? What would you call, like, the Versa-type pants? The Versa-type pants. Yeah, just, what do you call those? Adventure pants, something like this?

Some outdoors. Lifestyle pants. There's probably a word for it that I don't really know. But, hey, whatever you need to wear. OriginUSA.com, you can get it. When I was down in North Carolina last year, hooked me up with a little tour of the Orson factory. It was amazing.

It's amazing. It is amazing to see all the stuff that's going on in that factory, all the American goods. And I got to talk to a bunch of people there that were very happy to be working there and doing awesome stuff. I mean, it was like mind-blowing to be down there and see everything go down.

And you know, I'm so proud and happy that you could go down there and see that because it is such an investment in America to be doing that. Because the easiest thing to do, the easiest thing to do, look, bro, I can talk to someone in China right now.

Look, it wasn't, it used to be like that in the 70s and 80s when they took everything overseas. You used to have to send them a text, not a text message, but a wire or something, right? You had to go over there. No, you don't need to do that now.

You can call it, go on the internet, Google make t-shirt and boom you can get it done and you can just get everything made overseas and you can save a little bit of money so you can make a little more money just use slave labor just set your conscience aside your conscience aside just set it aside say that you're doing it because you know you're helping them you're not helping them you're keeping them enslaved no that's not the right way to do things so when you go down that factory that's the rebirth of American manufacturing. We're going to bring it back.

It's not easy. We're reinvesting everything right back into the factories, right back into the people, right back on the materials. That's what we're doing. So go to origin, USA.com and get yourself some freaking freedom and put it on your body. That's what I got. True. Also, if you want to represent,

discipline equals freedom. Go to jocco store.com. Get some hats on there, some shirts, of course, some hoodies on there. Also, what we call the shirt locker. We've arrived at that name, the shirt locker. It's a subscription scenario.

Anyway, discipline equals freedom represented different creative ways. You got this whole new schick about the shirt locker name. What do you mean? I don't know, this thing that you just did about, we've arrived at this name. Yeah, we did arrive at this name. A while ago. Like six months ago, why are we talking about it now? We still arrived at it.

We still arrived at it. Whenever you arrived at it, I got to get on it because every time we go to the muster, there's a bunch of people walking around rocking some great shirts. I'm like, where did you get that? shirt locker the only place because I got on the website I'm like cool I got to get on these and then I don't see all the cool drops because I'm not on the shirt lockers he said drops bro yeah that's a boomer over there talking about drop culture well technically technically it's not a drop it's similar but it's not it's a subscription there but here's a good

news okay if let's say one was in your position missed out on all the past shirts if you when you sign up you can get some of the past things okay yeah yeah given that they're not sold out at any given moment anyway It's a perk of joining the shirtlock. But yeah, good designs. The most recent one is you against you. Is that out yet? I heard that somewhere.

That's a good deal. December, December shirt is you against you. So yeah. Do you don't do a Christmas theme for December? Sometimes. But, you know, I feel like if you buy a Christmas shirt, you're going to be compelled to only wear it during Christmas, you know, which is cool. It's cool.

But, you know, what's the word evergreen or whatever that, you know, you can wear it whenever. Look at you, Roe. The big strategy. Over here, learning. That's amazing. Anyway, it's all on joccooster.com. Yep. And by the way, in this whole system,

like every day, this whole system, this whole atmosphere that we're in here, this whole ecology that we're living in, you're gonna need steak. It's true. Thanks. And I recommend you go check out primalbeef.com. You heard about it today.

you talk to the man, right? Who's making it happen? And it's beautiful. Quick question about, yeah, dude, I was like getting emotional. Cut me up, I was talking to the beauty. Well, yeah, this is going to be a beautiful question. How about that?

Okay, hell, yeah. So if I just wanted just ground beef, like every month, like a subscription scenario, I can do that. Done. We literally call it, I'm not very creative, so I called it the just ground beef box. Well, that makes sense.

Hey, Jockel store, just going, okay, that's a good team. I'm not like carnivore strictly, but we've always got cook ground beef. We're brushing up against them. Yeah, we're carnivore adjacent. We're right there. So I've got, my protocol is I've got about four pounds of primal beef, ground beef cooked at almost any time. Salt, pepper, that's all I put in there.

One, because the beef is ridiculous, but two, I also want to be versatile. Most of the time, my kids just eat that with some fruit or they'll put it on some rice or something but it's also there if we want to make tacos at night we can add a little bit of what you're extra seasoning okay that's what I was going to ask you so you got just ground beef you just cook it as is salt and pepper salt okay yeah there you go that's it because that goes with everything yeah whether I'm making tacos whether we're making lasagna we don't make lasagna pasta whatever we're making whatever you just throw the ground beef in there but it doesn't usually last because it's so good my kids are just put it on rice put it on a bowl with nothing else and it's usually gone

with you within a day. This sounds like you might have a plan. Yeah, that, well, that is my plan.

That's literally what I do. So I'll cook it. I put this rib rub on it. Yeah. Just a little bit, you know? And it's like, even if you want to make tacos,

you got the rib rub all already baked it or cooked into it. Yeah. The taco makes it, you know, a little thing. But yeah, you put on rice,

spaghetti, something like that. Yeah. Whatever. But yeah, have it all like, there's a bunch of it is what I'm saying. It's the best.

And it cooks, you know, you cook ground beef. It only takes a couple of minutes, and then you've got all that stuff just on standby. Only in my house it doesn't last. Yeah. So it's like constant. Yeah, yeah.

So that's why, yeah, you got to, because wrongs going back to the store to grab more, you know. So we've got 15 pounds in the just ground beef box. And then we have a new smaller box for people who maybe don't need 15 pounds every 30 days. There's seven pounds in there as well. But almost any box you buy from us, you're going to get the ground beef in there as well. So have it on standby. That's a fruit finish. What percentage is?

You know how they break it down? Yeah. What are we dealing with? 8515. And for, I think that's the sweet spot. That might be the sweet spot right there. I think it is. Because it's, that makes a burger.

Yeah. That makes a good burger. I've had three people text me within the last 24 hours and say they can't have a steak anywhere else because they've been ruined and they can't have a burger anywhere else because they've been ruined. I mean, the stakes are ridiculous, but our family eats a lot of burgers and we won't eat Anything it's just yeah it just sets the bar and then everything else is now kind of a disappointment Yeah, so check it out primalbeef.com get some of that also Colorado craftbeef.com

Another great family business out there in Colorado making great stakes as well so you can check them out. Yeah, great to hang out with Jeff at the council did you guys go through trade secrets? Yeah, we all we just kind of had our own little offside our beef off site. I know. I saw you too like like magnetically go towards each other and start talking. I was like, oh, dude, these guys had a lot of things to discuss. But it's awesome to see. Two great companies, great people, Colorado Craftbeef.com and primalbeef.com.

Check it out. Subscribe to the podcast. Check out jocco underground.com. Check out the YouTube channels. Check out psychological warfare. Check out flipside canvas.com. Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books about leadership and you can check those if you want.

I've also written a novel. I've also written a bunch of kids' books. So there's a movie coming that's going to help a lot of kids. And they're all going to be working out. They're all going to be eating clean. They're all going to be getting stronger, faster, smarter, and better. But you don't have to wait. You have to wait for that.

You can just get the books. So check those out. Also, echelon front, you want to talk about a little bit today. That's what we do. We take these leadership principles. And we teach them to your whole organization. And you will see a dramatic change in your organization because people will start working together as a team. People will understand what the mission is.

People will know what priorities to focus on. People will have decentralized command where everyone's going to step up and lead. That's what we're going to do for your organization. So if you need help inside your organization, you want Sean to come out, meet with you, go through training protocols, run through exercise. with you that will help you see your leadership shortfalls or one of our other instructors go to esplanfront.com we solve problems through leadership we also have an online training academy extreme ownership.com leadership is a skill believe it or not believe it or not you're not just born with a 10 out of 10 leadership skill sets doesn't work hey you might have a natural

seven in one of them that's cool but you might have a four somewhere else else, right? So these are skills. Might have a pretty naturally good arm lock. You ever met someone's got a pretty naturally good arm lock? Yes. Yeah, they exist. Like someone's got a good arm lock.

Yeah. But there's also people that have to learn the arm lock and they're not that good at but they can get good at it over time. Same thing with leadership. It's the same thing with leadership. It's a skill that you can learn. So go to Extreme Ownership.com, learn the skill of leadership. If you want to help service members active and retired,

you want to help their family, You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom. Mom, and Lee's got a great charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved to go to America's mighty warriors.org.

There's also Heroes and Horses.org. Micah Fink, taking people out in the wilderness so they can find themselves. And then Jimmy May's got an organization called Beyond the Brotherhood.org. Check those out. And also, primal beef gets engaged. Talk about it.

What are we doing? With C4? Yeah. Yeah. So we knew when we started this business that we didn't want it to be something that was just serving us. So we care a lot about the community we came from. So when we started the business, I reached out to Mr. Charlie Keating, who's the father of Charlie Keating, the fourth, who, awesome seal was nickname C4, best nickname of all time. It's in the running.

It definitely is. It's in the running. There's about five nicknames. I'm going to compile left. C4 is in the game. I mean, you can't have a much cooler nickname when your nickname C4. Yeah, that's freaking legit. I think I'm going to put together a list of the top 10 nicknames.

Just seal-wise? They're like military, because pilots have some good ones. They're not usually negative good. Yeah, pilots have some okay ones. You don't want to give Dave too much credit. Yeah, Dave, do you know what Dave's nickname was? It's a chip. Chip.

Yeah. Dave's nickname was Chip. And it is derogatory because he like chipped his tooth on some system of the thing. Yeah. But C4 is definitely It's definitely probably top five Yeah But I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to really consider

And think through those things actually we should have a we should have an offsite Or at least a phone call with all the boys and figure out Some of them real good Nick Campes because there's some good ones But C4 Charlie Keating So Charlie was Chuck Heavy let's go Guy loved by everybody in the SEAL team just total stud Like the operator that you you want to be when you get into the SEAL teams and

He was killed on his last tour over in Iraq. My troop actually bumped his troop out. That was my last combat tour as well. And his dad started a foundation in his honor called the C4 Foundation. And the purpose of this foundation is to provide services to seals and their families that they just can't get anywhere else. And the primary thing that they do is they operate this amazing ranch. I mean, you've been up there multiple times up in the mountains in California, not too far from here. and they have all these different resources for team guys

and for their families to get up there, to take care of themselves, to take care of their body, to take care of their mind, to connect back with their families. And I reached out to my first platoon chief, Dave, is now helping them out. He's been doing that for a couple of years.

He's actually at the ranch right now. And I just told them what we had going on. And I said, hey, we'd like to partner with C4. And every time we sell a box of beef, we'd like to donate a cut to seals and their family. through you guys. And Mr. Keating, just being the outstanding human that he was,

I had like the sales pitch already, like ready to show him why this was a good thing. And I got through like four words, and he's like, of course, let's do this. So anytime you buy a box, you're feeding yourself, super high quality beef, you're feeding your family,

but you're also taking care of our nation's special operations forces. So to this date, we've donated about 5,000 pounds of beef to the C4 Foundation. and we've only been in business for a little over a year. And that's all made possible by our patrons. So C4 Foundation doing great stuff.

And you deliver that. We do. Yeah. So you bring it down to the Va Beach or SD. Selfishly, I still want to be, you know, a little bit of part of the community and be a blessing to the boys. So we send a bunch out to the West Coast and then I drive down to the guys in the East Coast, just load the truck up with massive quality.

Like my suspension in my power wagon was dragging this last, this last drop-off. Is it just like a free-for-all, like a U.N. freaking food? It basically is. Yeah. It's just fighting over rib-eyes. On standby, just waiting to receive beef. But it's, again, that counterintuitive thing of you get to give and you get to get some in return. So, yeah, that's awesome.

And, you know, look, when you're in the Navy, you're not making a ton of money. And so getting, dude, my family. did not eat steak Yeah When when I was in the teams Like that wasn't on the freaking budget It was not on the budget at all Did not we didn't eat steak when I had kids and it wasn't the teams

So to be able to get these guys some freaking steak Hell yeah Yeah, that's what I'm talking about yeah If you want to connect with us on the interwebs Primalbeef.com Twitter How much that Twitter activity you're doing right now? About zero zero

I need to get back on Yeah I need to get back on. Primal underscore beef underscore co. And then you're on, you're on Instagram now. Kind of? Like I had this,

this portion where I was like excited about it a little bit. And then I just haven't done too much recently. It was all just stuff about the, like stuff on the farm, things like that. It's pretty interesting stuff though, at Sean Glass Actual.

Yeah. But you're not on Twitter X. No. I've only got five kids. Yeah. I've only got so much time to go around. So I got a priority.

And prioritize and execute. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. But if you wanna find Sean Glass Actual, you can find him at Sean Glass Actual. Or yeah, but check out Primal Beef, Primal underscore, or sorry, what's the, is the Instagram, Primal underscore Brief Beef underscore Co? Yeah, is that right?

But if you just search Primal Beef Co, like it's gonna be the thing that pops up. Got it. And then for Echo Charles and I, you can check out jocco.com and find all this stuff at jocco.com. And then on social media. I'm at Jocka Willink.

Echo is that, Echo is that Echo Charles. And just be careful because there's an algorithm on there that will literally just steal your soul from you. And you'll be thinking it's all good, but it's not. Echo Charles, anything else?

No, good to see Sean Glass again, as always. Always a pleasure, Echo. Always a pleasure. But it is like, you know, like if I want to talk to you, I do just tend to call you, whatever. So, yeah. Good to see you in person.

How about that? Yeah, cool. Sean, any closing comments? No, just thanks for having me. back on and you know love being part of the team right oh man well uh thanks for coming back on of course and thanks for sharing your lessons learned and thanks for your your service to the nation to the teams and now to your community uh and by the way thanks to all the soldiers sailors airmen and marines that are out there right now in harm's way keeping us safe and protecting our way of life

and thanks also to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers Correctional officers, Board of Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders, we thank you all for keeping us safe here at home. And everyone else out there, stay humble, be ready. Be prepared. You don't know what's going to happen. What Sean Glass is teaching these young men is something we can all learn.

Be ready. You don't know what's coming your way. And the way that you can be ready, The way that you can be prepared is by getting out there every day and getting after it. And until next time, this is Sean and Echo and Jocko. Out.