Jocko Podcast - 479: First Troops On The Ground In Afghanistan. With Green Beret Scott Neil

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground<Green Beret, Scott Neil. Task Force K-Bar. First boots on the ground in Afghanistan after Sept. 11. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 479 with Echo Charles and me, Jocker Willick. Good evening, Ego. Good evening. For extraordinary heroism and an outstanding performance of duty in action against the enemy in Afghanistan from October 2001 to March 2002, during its six-month existence task force K-bar was the driving force behind myriad combat missions conducted in combined joint operations area, Afghanistan. stand. These precedent-setting and extremely high-risk missions included search and rescue, non-compliant boardings of high-interest vessels, special reconnaissance, sensitive site exploitation, direct action missions, apprehension of military and political detainees, destruction of multiple cave and tunnel complexes, identification and destruction of several known al-Qaeda training camps, explosions of thousands of pounds of enemy ordinance and successful coordination of unconventional

warfare operations for Afghanistan. The sailors, soldiers, airmen, Marines, and coalition partners of combined joint special operations task force South Task Force KBarr set an unprecedented 100% mission success rate across a broad spectrum of special operations missions while operating under extremely difficult and constantly dangerous conditions. They established benchmark standards of professionalism, tenacity, courage, tactical brilliance, and professional excellence while demonstrating superb, esprieree to core and maintaining the highest measure of combat readiness. By their outstanding courage, resourcefulness, and aggressive fighting spirit in combat against a well-equipped, well-trained, and treacherous terrorist enemy, the officers and enlisted personnel of combined, Joint Special Operations Task Force K-Barr reflected great credit upon themselves and upheld

the highest traditions of the United States Armed Forces. And that right there is an excerpt from the Presidential Unit Citation for Task Force, K-bar, which represented some of the first troops on the ground in Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001. And it was an impressive start to the war. but as we found out only the beginning of the war. And some of the men that were there, especially some of those frontline troops,

some of the more junior men, went on and continued to fight around the globe for the next two decades. And it's an honor to have one of those men here tonight, Scott Neal. Scott is a former Green Beret Special Forces soldier who fought both in Afghanistan and Iraq and other parts of the globe.

And he's now president of one of the most, most successful veteran companies in America, horse soldier bourbon. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned along the way. Scott, thanks for joining us, man. Thank you very much. It's honor and privilege, and I'm just looking at a K bar right in front of me, giggling. Task Force K bar, which was a post.

What was the northern area? They were dagger. Dagger and sword. So three kind of main thrust elements. So dagger obviously was the unconventional side. Sword was the special unit side. And K-bar was this idea of joint at the time. So multinational, multi-forces.

We'll get into that. That's, it's really interesting to think about, you know, from my perspective, having spent 20 years in the military, having worked a lot with the big Navy, with the Marine Corps, with the army, and knowing the, how challenging that can be. So for you guys to get thrown together like that, I bet that was good times. It was as ad hoc, but necessary at the time, right? And it's kind of grown into what we take advantage of now,

but I don't know if it's going to be enduring because Big Army, Big Navy, likes to break things apart and make it what it used to be. Well, we'll get there eventually. And I don't know. I haven't figured out if you and I were ever in the same time. And perhaps there's a chance that we did missions together. in Iraq and I'm sure we'll figure that out if we did. But let's get a little background on you. What was growing up like?

Rough and rowdy kid. I grew up in central Florida. My family had been in Florida on cattle and citrus groves since the 1830s. I think my family history, we've got roles in the similar Indian Wars, the Confederate cavalry they were known for at the time. So it was just very rural and very poor, but very happy. So my grandfather, he was well known for long cattle drives, and he played the fiddle. So everybody from Nashville would come down, and he would make fiddles for him. And I grew up around the blue grass out on the range kind of thing. So your grandfather was alive while you were alive?

Oh, yeah. Oh, so you were watching him play the fiddle. All the time. And I remember, you know, a red barn with lots of cousins. Every Saturday, big potluck, you know, things you admire as a kid, you don't realize that you don't have a lot because you had a lot with family. But I always loved cowboys and Indians and cops and robbers and army men and everything like that. So I kind of set my pace to what I always wanted to do, and that's just joined the Army. And that was there any thing in school that led you in that direction?

Did you play sports or anything like that? All of them mediocrely. Right. So my brother was the champion, right? Always the all-star, always the team captain. Everything. Was he older or younger? He was older, six years. I loved football. I broke my collarbone, actually, racing motorcross, which kind of ended playing football. I wrestled. But I was at the weight class of, I think, 1.55 at the time and every other kid was. So, you know, I played in between. I was on the high school drag racing team. That's pretty speed. Awesome. Who knew? But, yeah. It was fun.

Did you guys build your own cars? Like, how was this all about? I had a... How'd I miss out on the high school drag racing? Well, you had the shops, right? You had the wood shop. You had the car shop. They don't have that stuff anymore, by the way, which is a damn shame.

I know. And it was just, you know, what's that stupid musical grease? You know what I mean? When the guys got together and they went in there and they built white lightning, it was like that. So I had the car that was a 327 and a Chevy Vega, so a crappy, nothing little thing. And you'd go down to the track, tune it up. and he'd race other high schools on the weekend.

Dang. Good times. Yeah. But you knew you always wanted to join the Army. That's it. I had no other aspirations. Back then, they had the GI Bill, you know, join and go to college. But for me, it was like, eh, you know, I wanted to be an airborne ranger.

Airborne ranger is what I want to be. You go to the recruiter. I did the late entry. I waited until I graduated and four days later left. Never looked back. And did you have some kind of contract or what did this recruiter hook you up with? Okay. But you wanted to be an airborne ranger?

I wanted to be an airborne ranger because that's all you would hear in movies or whatnot. So I went to one-stop unit training where they trained the entire battalion. So at the time you went to Fort Benning in the infantry and the entire basic training battalion all training together, then went to its first duty assignment. And that was Fort or California. So wait. So like when you say the whole battalion trained together, what about the senior NCO? No, no, all the privates. So all the new guys, all the privates.

And when we got there, they had a whole cadre ready to receive us. So I don't think they do that today. But back then it was kind of this idea that we would form. That way, everybody would grow senior to the point where after about the third or fourth year, those who get out, get out, those become sergeants, go on. And it was good because, you know, you have lifelong friendships with somebody you started basic training with. And then you go to Fort Ord, which was light infantry, which meant you walked everywhere. 100 mile road marches. It's like, wow.

And then what was your job? Was your rifleman? Just regular rifleman assistant gunner, right? Mule, whatever it took. Get some. You know, 70 pounds of lightweight, you know, backpacks and you sleep out of it in the elements. And our first kind of conflict was Panama. Did you get to jump in it or did you get to go into Panama?

I was in Panama back in June. So if you look about the conflict, it started rustling, you know, this idea that, you know, we had issues now that I'm senior and can read history. It's a lot different. But we deployed Fort Sherman, then Fort Sherman to Fort Espionar, which is across from the locks. And it was a Panamanian base. And we dug in at the officers club because Americans were staying there. And for four months stayed in that foxhole. and then we rotated out November.

Oh, you just missed it. Yep. And I'm like, oh, man. So. Now, did you feel at the time, because I joined in 1990, right? And so in 1990, it was like, you know, we would hope that there would be one mission, you know. I guess when I first joined, we were hoping that the goal for, I thought, you know, we were hearing news reports that there's going to be 40,000 casualties in the first 48 hours. I thought 100% I'm going to go to war.

It's going to be all set. I'm going to get good. It's going to be World War II type scenario. Let's go. So when that was over in whatever it was, 96 hours. A dust up. Yeah. I was pretty heartbroken to say the least.

I was in training when it happened. So imagine I just missed Panama, right? I get to another infantry unit and I say, okay, I want to go SF. Start going through the training and then the war begins. When did you hear about SF? I heard about it. Because we're sitting in a foxhole and seventh special forces group was living at espionar. And then you'd see these guys run by in shorts, UDTs at the time with, you know, big mustaches.

And you're like sergeant, but they're not Panamanian. Who are they? Don't look at them. Don't touch him. Don't say anything. And after four months of just watching these guys run by, I'm like, I want to be on that side. I don't want to sit here in a foxhole. And so the recruiter came around.

you see this, you know, video of you out of helicopters into water and, you know, world peace and, you know, lightning fast and all these things, the young man, I said, that's it. And you go through the first physical fitness test, you pass it, then you finally get orders to brag for selection. So at the time, there's no Google. There's no book on how to win, how to get through special forces. So what year is this? What year did you show up there?

Um, 90, 91-ish to begin training. Yeah. And you, did you do anything to prepare for it? Somebody must have told you like comp a rock or something. Like that piece of paper in front of you is all you got was a printout at the time, right? It says here, um, we recommend that you, you know, run a lot. We recommend that you walk a lot. And special forces selection, I learned then and meet myself going through it and then post.

is there's no encouragement. There's no nothing. It's all on you to get ready for it. It's all on you to present yourself as you're going through these tasks. So at the time, I couldn't call anybody. I didn't know anybody. They said, don't talk about it, that you're going.

So I'm like, okay, I show up. And if the sergeant said, start running, I started running, like Forrest Gump. And at the end, he said, stop running. I stopped running, right? Climb the obstacle course. You know, yes, Sergeant. And that was selection the whole way through.

I don't know how much you want me to talk about it, but it starts off all individual, right? How you run now, you know, five miles. You don't know what the time standard is. You just run it. You do a 12-mile road march. You do an obstacle course. You do a land nav. You do all these individual things.

And you have no name. It's just a number. And you look on the board that morning. They say show up at area X. You show up. that read you your task and you execute. And they say, get back on the truck. And you go back to the barracks, take some intelligence tests, go to bed.

You can quit at any time. And as you're going through that, are people dropping out? So you must have people quitting and then people not making the standard, whatever the standard is that's unknown. Yeah. So you get up in the morning, you find, you know, whatever board your number's on, it's always a different group. You go to that task.

when you come back, things are gone and people are gone. So you don't know at the time who quit or who got hurt because sometimes some things people will twist their leg or maybe fall off an offical course. So you don't know, you don't hear the hubbub because you're in your small task at the time. And then in the morning, because most people self-reflect and they'll sneak out on fire guard

or something like that and leave and they're just gone. Yeah. And now we started with about 360. we ended with about 56 and out of the 56 42 were selected. And that final selection that they're making, what are they basing that on? Like you got a kid that showed up, how long is it, three weeks? Yeah. So you get a kid that shows up three weeks, completes all the tasks and gets done and you go, yeah, no.

So there's, once again, I've learned this afterwards. Bob, who you want to have on here as well, he ran selection as well, right? And so one is physical. Obviously, it's can you pass? That's it. Not can you be faster passer? Do you pass a minimum standard? Okay.

Nobody tells you what it is. You just have to pass it. So next is can you work as a team? So these team tasks, very dynamic, you know, you apply sweat and impossible conditions. And can you operate in a task so the sergeant has a kind of list as they're observing. You go through these things, right? Do you help when you help? Are you being noticed?

Do you help harder? Right? These kind of things. And next is the aptitude portion. So after all these physical tasks, you come back, you'll eat your child. You'll go back to the classroom. You start taking psychological and memory tests and general aptitude test. And that'll start to put you in a bucket, whether you have skill sets to be a medic,

a communication sergeant's, dumb. like me, weapon sergeant, right? Bang. All these things, they start to filter that out through the process. And actually I learned that this selection process is part of the Army Human Behavior and Sciences Department. So it's very calculated as you go through this process. So at the end, what do you want? You want somebody that's physically, morally, right,

mentally capable of expeditionary entrepreneurism for the military, right? remote, low resources, high stress, you know, solving your own problems because there is no solution other than what you create. So at the end of it, once you're selected, that just begins the training. Did you have anything that really challenged you in selection itself? Or you just kind of a gray man type scenario? I would say gray man. My last name is Neil.

So I always lined up in the center. That's true. And so, you know, I always kept quiet. I didn't try to game it. I didn't try to read my way through it or ask for advice from others. I just took it every day and did what I was told, like Scotty Gump. And, you know, what I went through mentally, though, luckily I was a poor kid that worked really hard because your brain is the enemy. And it starts lacking sleep.

It starts lacking physical capability. Start to doubt yourself. So your losses come from within. And those that surrender to it are the ones that walked off. But there's a reason. Because once again, in a small team alone and not afraid, you can't walk off the mission. So that part was good. It worked.

I mean, the people that have come out have been very successful. Some have escaped through because maybe they were physically gifted. You don't have to be a rocket science, but it can't be totally stupid because then the skills training will weed out the stupid. Then you get done with that and then it's into the Q course. Yeah. And by the way, so now what we were talking about was,

so the goal for happened at some point and you're all looking at that going, dang, you guys were all looking at each other, but we just missed that whole thing. Turn it back on. Hold on a second. You know what I mean?

I'm the one. Don't you realize, you know, what's going on? And you can only watch it from afar and maybe a few media sources. And you don't understand what green berets

are doing, let alone seals or any, you know, other mission, anything, you don't know that. And you just know that you're missing. So let's accelerate this. Isn't there some presidential finding that we could be pulled out of class today and they need me? They need me now. I mean, do I got to write a congressman? But no. And it was over.

Yeah. And, you know, then you graduate and you think you're the most capable, physically fit, you know, you're the right tool on the team and they can't wait for you to get there. And I get to my first special forces team, and here are all these legends that had just, you know, worked with the Kuwaiti underground. They had, you know, fought exceptionally. And here I was a young kid. So what were you guys for? Where'd you end up at? Fifth Special Forces Group.

Oh, awesome. So in Special Forces, you're aligned regionally. So Fifth Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, we're aligned towards the Middle East. So when I say Middle East, think about Muslim religion and cultures all the way up to the stands, which is just become open mid-80s all the way down to Saudi and Kuwait, Yemen, then into Africa with Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya. Yeah, it's a great A-O. Yes.

And at the time, though, I hated it because everybody was going to Okinawa, right? They're going to first group in Asia, the fun places, right? Europe, South America. Yeah. Here I am going to the desert. Yeah. Yeah, that's, so the seal teams used to be oriented geographically as well.

And we changed that. Luckily, I think it's luckily, luckily, luckily we changed it prior to 9-11 and to where they started to, at least started to change it to where a team was a team and you could deploy that team wherever. But the geographical locations that it used to be was seal team one was south east Asia. So think the good times of what you just said. Okinawa, Thailand, Philippines, Guam. And then Seal Team 5 was supposed to be winter, which on the West Coast just meant, it just

meant one word, Korea. Yes. And I guess Northern Japan as well. seal team three was was the Muslims areas that you just mentioned so I was supposed to be over in the desert in uh southwest Asia and then in the east coast seal team two is Europe seal team four was south america so that you know seal team two everyone want to go to seal team two and everyone want to go to south america too so and then seal team eight ended up being sort of africa africa areas so it was geographical for a while and there is still a remnants of that yeah there

is still a remnants of that in some form, at least East versus West Coast. But guess what? I sat, I had guys with me from Steel Team 8 in Iraq and, you know, everyone worked together. So we had to get over it. But at the time for you were you thinking, well, at least I'm in the area of operations, what will most likely have a conflict? Or were you just? Yes, this and no. Okay. Young, excitable. Scotty, you know, wanted to. Because just FY, I thought I was going to Vietnam. I thought I was going to Saigon and I thought I was going to the May Kong Delta and this was at 1990. When I first got there, you see the legends there, literally a year and a half out from the Gulf War, but then Somalia was kicking on, right? And we had guys going in and out of Kenya and driving up humanitarian assistance into Somalia.

So there was always something. I mean, every year we would go back to Kuwait for three or four months in a rotation just in case there was another invasion. So it was free for all training, all the ammo, all the demolition, anything you can't really do back in the States because you're isolated within a military base, right? Over there, free for all, right? Just tons. Udari range. I mean, tanks and T72s and close air support and all of these things, it prepped you, you know, for the. conflict, but then I spent six months in Africa with doctors and vets treating rare cattle

diseases and tribes that were being attacked by Somalis rustling their cattle. It was awesome. I mean, lions and tigers and bears every night, and you're trading beads and you're trying to eat with the locals. I mean, it was full on. I did six, seven months in Pakistan with the DEA, you know, learning the drug trafficking in route so Lahore to Karachi to everywhere once again small team alone and unafraid those were the perfect you know pre-war missions that I don't think even

anybody realizes the value of being in those environments and the networks you create and the interagency came from before 9-11 and how we had to rely on on post yeah no those are those are great missions for a peacetime military going out living amongst the people. And like you pointed out, that's how we build those relationships with those host nations. And we learn about the cultures. Hopefully we capture that information so that we can utilize in the future and we don't do dumb things. So those are great missions, really. And I wish, I suspect they're kind of getting a little bit back. We're turning back into a peacetime so the Evan flow. But we have to remind ourselves and our commands, you know, what we did in between, in between, you know,

peace. In Colombia, we worked heavily with their security forces, special forces, everything to defeat the FARC. It took 30 years. So we're now have friends, you know, deploying down south and working with those same forces we did before this. We have friends now going back into Africa. What I'm not certain we're ready for is to capture those relationships, right, and keep fostering them. So young commanders keeping up with the young commanders that eventually become three star, four stars of whatever country. And if something happens, you plug back into the software life network and you pull them back into that relationship.

So you rack up a bunch of deployments during that time. Again, those sound like really good quality deployments for that time period. In that time period for me, I was doing, I did one deployment that was what was. We called a spec ops deployment. We deployed to Guam and then did exercise out of Guam. But then we had seals that were in combat in Somalia who had come from a Navy ship. And you could volunteer because no one wanted to be on a Navy ship as a seal. And so it was very easy to get that spot if you wanted it.

So I looked at it and said, those are the guys are going to combat. Then me and some of my buddies were like, let's get going that kind of platoon. So I did two of those platoons and spent a bunch of time. driving around in circles off the coast of Somalia, driving around in circles into Persian Gulf on both those, and then eventually I did an aircraft carrier deployment as well when I was out on the East Coast. And then finally, when I was kind of wrapping up,

my enlisted time, I was working in the training, as a training cadre at SEAL Team 1. And that's kind of, was where I spent the 90s. And did you, you ended up as a drill sergeant, didn't you at some point? That had me an interesting. Awesome. It's not. So, you know, SF just probably like the SEAL's mid-career at schoolhouse time. So typically most go back to Fort Bragg or they go, you know, wherever some of these schoolhouses are. And every year, special forces was required to give four green berets to drill sergeant. And so I got notified about four months previously and I was trying out for another element. And I'm like, eh, I don't need to go to that.

I'm going to go to this. And literally the week of the head of the post school said, hey, you know, you know that your drill sergeant school is coming up in a week. I'm like, what are you talking about? I have no idea. I thought we got rid of this. He goes, no, no, no, no. Well, let me call this other start major.

Oh, you're good. Don't worry about it. Comes Friday. Hey, you need to pick up your packet to go to drill sergeant school. I'm like, hey, this thing's solved. I don't know who you're talking to. You need to talk to this guy. This guy calls me up about an hour later and says, yeah, I can't work through this.

And I picked up my orders to go to Drill Surton School Friday afternoon at 3.30. I showed up on Monday and you sit there in a big room and they start yelling at you and they say, if you don't want to be here, stand up now. So I'm like, that's easy. I don't want to be here and you should up and sit down. And so for two years, I went to four. How long is drill search in school? Six months.

Maybe it's shorter. I can't remember. I blocked it in my special place, right? It's just repetitive. This is how you march, private, stand-up march. It's just barking this repetitiveness. And so I went to Fort Leonard Wood, which is honed with the artillery. So I'm like, eh, I didn't get infantry.

Crap. I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And then it was the brand new, Jenner Integrated Basic Training. The Summer of Love. So this is like 1999 or something like that? Yeah, 99 and 2000. So you were there for the first integrated men and women together in an open bay barracks type scenario? No, you had men on one side of the open bay and then you had a door, you had women on the other side.

But I call it the summer of love because you're intercepting love letters. I mean, they're just out of high school, right? It's insanity. And these are the band members, the cooks, all of the other soft side of everything. And I was a senior drill sergeant. So I had other, you know, drill sergeants that were, you know, infantry or mechanics or whatever. And you're just teaching them the basics of basic training, right? How to march, how to organize.

You know, you fire a leader every other day. You just, I tell them, private, you paid for this, right? This is your experience. We're going to give it to you. And, you know, half the time, you're just trying to take something that's clay in a mound and just mold. and just mold them into something before they leave on and, you know, go to whatever specialty they're doing. So every eight weeks, a new batch, every eight weeks, seven days a week,

3.30 in the morning until you put them to bed at 9.30 at night. Now, did you get the, I mean, how many people in a, was it a company you're putting through? No, I'm putting a battalion through at a time, so maybe 600. How many suicide attempts are there? They're, hmm. Boy, none successful, right? Because you have constant touch and watch.

Usually it's an AIT where they have time to slow down and think. They got a lousy weekend. Their first girlfriends left them. You know what I mean? They're in such a managed culture of go, go, go. You know, there's all the doubt and all these other things that you just force it out of them, right? There's no breath. The reason I asked that is because I remember.

There's lots of AWOLs. Okay. I remember kids like in my boot camp. There was like a couple suicide attempts, which is weird, you know. You're kind of like, whoa, like this kid's four bunks over from me. And he just tried to kill himself with a safety razor or whatever. And it seemed like if you had 600 people going through at a time, you would see a lot of that stuff. Yeah, it was mostly towards the end when you finally, you know, you have no time off the first four weeks.

And then maybe four hours to go to church on Sunday, you let off the pressure. And then by close to the end, you might have a full day, they go to the store, right? You got a couple bucks. And then literally the last week is when you see people. They see the train tracks, as they call them. Right? There was no, remember, it was all pay phones at the time.

They'd all stand online, a drill sergeant there, and mommy and daughter and family, and that was it. It was all scripted. Today, you know, I can't speak for it, but I can only understand. You have kids, unfortunately, that maybe didn't, disclose they were on medication or something. So by the time the third, fourth, fifth week comes about and they don't, they don't know how to handle themselves anymore. They were little

chemically, you know, blocked. And they don't know the structure of life. They don't know how to take an as chewing. They don't know the difficulties of these things. And that adds up. Did you get any like major insights into human nature when you were doing this? Or is it just, did it become so repetitive? It becomes repetitive because once again, control. You have a very scripted format, right? So Big Army doesn't let you deviate. This isn't make it up as you go.

So every day as a drill start, you have to emotionally break them, right? Take them individually down. Make them hate you collectively. right so is that what they teach you did they teach you like you want to make i know it you know what i mean because if i get them to focus on me they want to outperform me they want to be up earlier before i get there you know what i mean they start plotting and scheming they know my personality then i got a unit then i remove myself and i give that unit or that cohort to the military that then shapes them for the new foundation check and you did that for two years two years is that

And then you, so you go back to fifth group? It's the summer of 2001. Okay. And, you know, so now I'm communicating. I was only on one team for since 91, 92 until I left 99. So do I go back to the same team? But they had started a new unit up in fifth group that was more of a direct action kind of, they called it the commanders in extremist force. So each group has this regionally oriented kind of.

SRDA team that's already in the area in case things happen. You could respond to your capability or you can prep for somebody else. And I'm like, oh, I'll do that. Sounds good. Blow stuff up, shoot things, you know, punch people in a face. That's, it's America. I'm angry. You know, two years of being a drill star and I wasn't happy. And we got there and it began the cycle. You now had new funds, new capabilities. You were going to go to the SIFT? Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. So it was the very beginning. And we got to pull in the best from fifth group, right? We started doing exchanges with other units.

We started getting on the national exercise program. So doing more complicated things. You know, now you're like, oh, my God. So we were ready on one October to go into Middle East and begin as a SIF company. And got it. So you were, you guys had done a workup. Yep. and a training cycle, then that was the first fifth group SIF to go through a training cycle like that.

Yeah. That's awesome. And then you were prepared to go on deployment to the Middle East where we're going to go Bahrain or Kuwait or something. So you're going to go there and be on standby for four months or six months or whatever. Yep. And do a normal deployment. Yep. And you were going to leave on October 1st. Yes. Okay. So what were you on pre-deployment leave or something on? No, no, no. September 11th, What were you guys doing? September 11th, 595, which is now kind of our sister team. And they had just got back from Uzbekistan. They were training the Spetsnots.

And as you know, the Soviet Union fell apart. They had a lot of nukes and other capabilities. They had al-Qaeda and other elements trying to enter and, you know, sneak through. And also you had the kind of drug markets that were getting into Europe and Russia. So they were training their forces and capability, a typical security force assistance training. And they got home. Mark had just left the team, Bob and Will, and they took our snipers. We had an exercise that weekend, and we were inserting snipers on this faux terrorist training compound, and they were sending back signals and digital and all kind of other things.

And these were SIF snipers? Yeah. Okay. And when the morning of 9-11, we're in probably the second day of our exercise. And I remember the Intel Sergeant walking in and on the whiteboard, he said the World Trade Center's been hit. And we thought it was just part of the exercise. Part of the scenario. An escalation, right?

The curveball. And an hour later, he came in and right. The second one's been hit. So we started sending out RFIs requests for information. What does that mean? You know, exercise, exercise, exercise. You know, what's the complication? So it wasn't until four hours later

Then Mulholland came in and said stop This is for real And if you did see the movie It was the Chow Hall Everybody went to the Chowahaw and saw CNN And they're like, holy crap Because you guys were in isolation Yeah oh that's right

I remember they'd put us into They'd put us into Echo Charles back in the day They'd for an exercise They would part of the exercise would be To get put into quote unquote isolation and in an isofac an isolation facility so you'd go in there because you know you weren't allowed to talk to anyone no one is allowed to talk to you you're focused on the mission you can't be you don't want anyone to you know talk about what you're going to be doing

and all this so they put you in this is so that's where you guys were and the only information that you're receiving is from the people that are controlling the exercise that you're going to do or handler so these so you guys thought this is just part of the exercise what why was that's crazy crazy All of a sudden, we've got a cell in America. We're uncovering the cell. We're sending back information. We're, you know, doing assets.

We're doing all the things that on this checklist of capabilities you're supposed to have. And when they put the World Trade Center's been attacked, it's just, does this accelerate timing? You know, you start thinking, you know, what does this mean? What are these shocks and patterns of, you know, not normal? And so you start thinking through them and request information and you go further. So we literally thought that was it. So now you go to the chow hall. Yeah.

And you guys, like I'm sure we all knew, it's time to go to war. It's time to go to war. So we were already packed and ready to go. So now what to do? The world's in chaos. They shut down the airways. Presentations need to be presented to multiple commands. to remind them, you know, that we're a capable, competent force. We work for you. So you have to do

a little bit of salesmanship again because everybody's in chaos. You have, you know, obviously national forces, you know, in theater forces, all these other things, you start to see that it became, you know, who's going to get what. Mark and Bob, their team was put back together again because they just came from the area. So you start to see two parallel paths where the unconventional side was being formed. They didn't know exactly what to do with the direct action side. So we moved forward into Kuwait and then we moved into an island off the coast. Were you married at the time? No. So you were just a young single dude not getting a shit about anything. This is what you say. This is how it ends, right? This is how legends are made. Let's go. But to move a company of our

size with our capabilities that requires a lot of airlift, right? We don't we don't move. We don't move. lightly. It's no more one team, one seat. You know, we have vehicles. We've got platforms. We got things. So to get us over to the playground, it took a lot, but luckily we had it done. And ahead of time, I actually went into Yemen first. So prior to, prior to getting to Kuwait, you went to Yemen. Like how many guys should go to Yemen? We're a site survey to see what's going on there? At the time, everybody wanted to help America and everybody realized they had an al-Qaeda problem. So if everybody came on the network, they would get funding and fighters. And they would, you know, it was the time.

And so Yemen had reached out. They had their own cells and problems. And they sent a small team to work with our counterparts to see what we could do to provide, you know, aid and capabilities. Not only on the close family protection side, they're always worry about themselves, these leaders. And then what kind of force, what could they give? get what kit what lethal aid packages whatnot so we went in there evaluated them went all over again this is you and one other guy yeah who's like is it your team sergeant what's your role in this what's your position at the time now no i'm a what they call a cell leader so now we're we're

organizing troops so three teams you know 12 for sniper 24 assaulters a headquarters element so i'm a cell leader with about six seven guys um but this was such a piece together opportunity, they just needed a couple guys just to go evaluate. So did you, how'd you find, how'd you get to Yemen? Was it civilian aircraft? Flew in. Yeah, flew in. You know, you have your linkups meet you at one side of the airport and you get the

shakedown. You say nothing. You do nothing. The embassy, you know, comes by and picks you up and then you're gone. How much time do you spend in Yemen? Probably a week and a half, two weeks. And it's still, so, it's so, it's hard to look at things. in a pre-9-11 mentality

because in post-9-11 and as we began to actually fight like we all got so much experience that to think about what it was like going into, for you going into Yemen. The beginning of the beginning. Yeah. Right? So, I mean, here I am going into Gunsooks,

you know, looking at can you buy off the black market or market and equip people, what a resource available, you're looking at the time they were called the Rangers or we called them the Rangers, you'd see them do a couple of things. You'd watch them go on a mission. It's just, that's the old OSS,

Lawrence of Arabia, right? They don't know what is needed or what's going on or whatever. Big people are thinking about big things. We need you to go just evaluate and assess, build some packages, work with the elements in the embassy, and hold fast.

How long do you spend there? Week and a week and a half. And then you go to Kuwait. Well, we go back to Kuwait. Then we go further into the Gulf, and that's when the war had begun. So in the beginning of the war, it was really an air campaign, and they tried to bomb anything that they thought was relevant. But once again, big air force and big targeting planners are looking for bridges and tank depots

and things of conventional forces. After about two days of that, they don't know what to do now. And so, you know, as we start hearing the chatter come in, the unconventional side, You know, it was proposed that, hey, we used to work with the Mujahideen. Let's find some resistance fighters. A couple had reached out because they had saw some congressional delegations and other people when they traveled abroad. So they started using literally an old business card and called an individual. An individual called a buddy in the Pentagon.

The Pentagon called him back the next day. He called him back and said, I'll take fighters. And that's how the unconventional side started. And then when did you? What were you hearing you were going to do? Like how did the planning and preparation for you going into Afghanistan? How long did that take and what it looked like? It started in, so October 19th, the first two SF teams went in.

Then you had a national force, which is now disclosed, went in to Omar's compound. You had the Rangers that jumped into South of Kandahar. So you start thinking strategically, how are we going to move forward and position forces because things were landlocked. They didn't really have a relationship in Pakistan to maneuver. Uzbekistan was still on the edges, right? Still remnants and influence of Soviet. So they realized they needed some, you know, on the edges airfield capability. So that's what you saw go for.

So initially the two teams, one was maneuvering towards. Kandahar the other, Masra Sharif in the north to capture that airfield, which was a heavy lift capable airfield. And then we started planning for central Afghanistan, you know, airfield seizure, hold, resist, you know, face out. So it was kind of in a way like you guys were going to be utilized for what you had trained to do. Yeah.

Which is kind of nice. Yeah. So what started happening, we started seeing through messaging. and human intelligence that all of these uncomventional battles, you now have chaos within the Taliban and their al-Qaeda brothers. They're over-communicating. So now you have capabilities that would hear this chatter

and they would start meeting up behind the scenes, trying to figure out how to contain, resist. They didn't know what's going on. So now you start to figure out that they're meeting in certain areas. So that becomes the picture perfect. We need more surgical and a capability that can strike precision behind the lines versus unconventional Mad Max front of the lines things and that's what got us

into the game yeah because that's really just so everyone understands so that's that's like absolutely the capability that your unit was 100% direct action oh we we're going to know the locations of bad guys through various intelligence sources and when we know where they are we need to go send people to go get them we followed the script and the script you know you Usually you'll try to put eyes on, whether it's electronic or human eyes. You get pattern of life. You communicate. You determine whether that is false, right, by pattern of activity.

It could just been a rival saying, I don't like this person or none of the indicators at the time would warrant a package or somebody coming in. Then there's a trigger event. You go, you hit all around it because you can't. at the time we weren't very good at saying that's the compound because there's 40 compounds so you have to isolate all of it and then smart men make smart decisions you could i could run into an objective and know this isn't it or you can run in and it's the hornet's nest and so you use all your dark arts to uh speed fineness of action i forgot to ask you this did you have a language I did.

I had... Back in the day, I know, does S.F. still go to language? Is that still part of the pipeline? I had Persian Farsi, which was Iranian.

And then never spoke it because I was always in the Middle East for Arabic, modern standards. So I took modern standard classes. Then in Africa, Swahili. So if you learn 20, 30 words,

how to count the 10, do you speak English? Does your friend speak English? Can you call somebody who speaks English? You can get around. And you always will find that English is the business language. There's always somebody.

So you just learn to be conversationally and pleasant and whatnot. You're never really technical. Dude, they threw a language program into the pipeline for seals for a little while. It just was such a fan. Hands up. You know what I mean? Stop.

It's just like we were so bad. I think it's part of, you know, the culture of Green Bay's when you know that's the, that's what you guys. guys do. It's like we go and work with the indigenous forces, but it's a level of pride that you can speak a language and speak it well and all that. Seals are just like, yo, well, I don't want to learn how to talk like them. It's distracting me from my other test. I was like that too, but there's a

difference between speaking a language and growing up in the culture and understanding the nuances of three cups of tea, you know, the book about sit down, get to know each other, talk about your where's the weather, you beat around the bush. And it was the same way when you work with indigenous forces, I mean, they're humans, they're guerrillas, they're part-time-ish, you know, they're a little slow on wanting to go charge down the hill and take a battle, and you have to, you know, it's like talking to your cousins. It's like starting a cousin army, right?

So as you guys are recognizing that, okay, they've got targets we're going to go. I mean, how freaking pumped are you guys at this point? Now our first mission was like everything you train to be, right? You get on the helicopter, you get off the helicopter, you run to the objective, you explosively breach outer perimeter, inner perimeter, you start encountering people. You move through the objective.

You start doing SSE, you could, it could have been training exercise or how we operated now with two-way and that fire. So this is, so you get, you get to Afghanistan. And how do you guys get there? Like C-7 teams? I took a, from the location, Kandahar was starting to fall. They just took an over-the-airfield.

They wanted a precision team because displacement of leadership, and they wanted to find them, right? So we loaded up that day. I remember they called in a 1-30 that was doing, doing a milk run, diverted him from going to Qatar. He landed. He had two nurses in the back. We backed in our trucks, our gun trucks, loaded for bear.

And we said, here's the destination. And the nurse are like, what are we supposed to do? I'm saying, well, you could stay or you can get off. But we commandeered at 1.30 and that was it. Yeah. You had to just be so freaking fired up. It was. So the same thing.

You land. It's still rolling. The tailgates down. You roll the trucks off and you go for it. Then you get there. And did you already have your first target package? No. So you get on the ground, you have a little bit of time to establish.

Yeah. Cana Hard airfield. But you were traveling light. So you didn't have any kind of. Anything. You were just a mobile assault force. Which is kind of awesome. How many computers did you have with you?

Enough at the time. You had those little Panasonic tough books. That was it. And enough to write us something up and put it in to digitize it and send it off. Nowadays, Echo Charles, that damn assault force is showing up with 500 people, printers, the whole nine yards, lamination machines. You're in a different world when you see the printers come out. You're like, yeah, there it is.

Things change. But it, so it was on the fly. You start doing what you do. You build train models out of cardboard boxes for ammunition and styrofoam. and you kick open a crate. And I can show you photos of just areas of where they start hearing chatter. So as they develop it more, you start planning, you know, who goes left, who goes right, start coordinating your aviation assets.

And then one night, you put in the SOs and you see what they see. And you show up there and you are part of this task force K-bar. And task force K-bar was actually being run by a seal. a captain, I think he was a captain at the time, Captain Harward. And interestingly, the whole thing was also being run by a seal by a guy named Bert Calland,

who was an admiral at the time. And it's interesting because Calland was my second CEO at SEAL Team One, and Harward was one of my Commodores along the way. So here it was, what are the chances that both those guys are in the senior positions, for the kickoff of this war. That's,

because there's not a lot of seals compared to, compared to SF for sure. I think it was a sign of the times that came about from the relationships in Somalia. So if you look at, you know, Blackhawk down, for example, but then how many seals that eventually went on to leadership with Olson, right?

The dynamics of this joint operation changed it. And culturally, you could say, one thing operational how do you report up how do you get approval you're always trying to win the yes so all you want to do is present factual demonstrate that you're capable and confident and earn trust within the leadership that they give you the go right and i think that became the first thing we had our very first mission uh it was we were starting to get in other elements they didn't know what to do with the dutch the germans the new zealanders the australians that were coming in right

So all of a sudden you'd put together a mission. They're like, no, no, no, not your, let's do the New Zealanders today. And it's like, okay, let's plan. Obviously, they got lots of mountains and they know about high sights and okay. So we started doing what I call old-fashioned Greenberry confidence targets around the area of Kandahar. Don't know exactly this thing. We've got some intel. Let's put some eyes on.

Let's do pattern life. So you're practicing, rehearsing like a kindergarten band, right, to make. sweet music and then people are getting more trusting of each other. And then finally, I think the first couple of the- So that's what you guys were doing to you guys were going out and do little recies? Yeah. Now were these rural recies or urban recies? Rural. Rural. So you're going up in a mountain somewhere? In the mountains or outside the edges of Kandahar, you know, once again, the militias had already taking over inside of Kandahar. And, you know, there's a whole other story of the hospital

where some al-Qaeda were hold up. So there's pockets. You don't know where people have fled. So now there's total unorganized chaos on leadership. And where are they reconcilitating is what you want to find. So you don't want to find masses of two, three hundred. They didn't exist anymore. They were four commanders, you know, three people seeing each other,

curiers, dispassing information, trying to find out, you know, cachets, things like that. So the first couple missions were, you know, more confidence. They weren't really, okay, there's 20 bad guys. And these are the bad guys. And they're going to resist you. So you're going to go in guns of blaze. And it was, we don't know.

We don't have the assets. We're not mature back then like we have today. And where you have 360 of, you know, capabilities. Then it was like, yeah, hunches. I was sitting here thinking about the maturity level of the U.S. military at the time. And it was like not super mature because it just when you're doing it for real, there's so many things that come into play that you're just not, there's not there's not there.

And every training exercise in the world that just doesn't bring the same element to it. There's something that you can't train for. No, because it's real. Yeah, exactly. And I could sit here and tell you the first times of thing, first times you shoot at a vehicle and the tires don't explode. You know what I mean? It's like, goddamn Hollywood.

Come on now. You know, and the first time you breach into things, you get a misbreach, it doesn't open up all the way. You're trying to crash yourself through and out. You know, all these things are like, note to self, okay? That was stupid. The first time I got shot at, I was in a Humvee, and I'm looking at the Humvee in front of me.

And all of a sudden I'm looking, I'm like, who the hell is smoking? Because I'm seeing like little sparks coming off. I'm like, who's flicking their cigarettes out of that vehicle? Like, what is wrong? Well, why is someone in my platoon smoking? No one's smoking? Why is someone smoking all of a sudden? Oh, sure enough, they're getting shot at.

Cool, got it. Well, you know, the first time you shoot a rocket, you don't have your hearing in, you know, it does these things. Combat becomes, you know, increasingly first time you shoot at somebody, but you got suppressors. You know what I mean? You're like, it's, it's, they're all things we all collectively needed to learn. You know, now 20 years later, I wonder if the. elements coming up have received those lessons that we put those things in place. So, you know, after I got back from that deployment, I also had the Special Forces Advance

Urban Combat Committee. And we tried to program these things in because we had learned a lifetime of lessons in one deployment, but we had Special Forces guys redeploying in urban environments now, especially Iraq, that they didn't have the depth we had. we couldn't solve, we couldn't race to everybody else's urban prom. Yeah, yeah. So going back to this, you guys do some recies, you guys were out there, you're getting your feet wet, you're developing a little rapid maturity of like, okay, I'm off, I went outside

the wire, we maintained communications, we didn't have any accidental discharge. Yes, Ranger, Sergeant, we passed this stage. We all came back with, you know, men, mission, and material complete. And then we did our first, this is it. and it was about a five compound spread, and we had some partner forces with us that were going to be the outer cord on. And we realized that we couldn't use,

typically you have 160th, which is very well known, very precise. They've played this game a while because of the distance we had to take Air Force 53s, and they're not known as combat landing capable. So we're flying, we're flying. It's about four hours. at altitude in weather, you know, you're trying not to freeze.

You're getting fueled and you land and it takes off and you do not know where on God's green earth you exist. And it's like landing on the moon. And you realize that your night vision only sees so far. And then what do you do? Pull out your compass. So we turn on one GPS, can find itself. You say, got to move.

It's like the ranger sergeant in your ear, you know what I mean? what you're going to do private what you're going to do so we start moving up to high ground and somebody goes over the radio and says what about landmines so do you crouch on the ground and look for the three little sticks that you see in a movie you don't know what to do then uh we start moving out once again to a little high ground and then a helicopter flies over us we're like okay let's follow the path of the helicopter and then somebody says on the microphone what if they're taking off and leaving or we're running it just starts happening you're like now you're in total blackout chaos. You just don't know what to do. So this is your first mission. This is the first one big, big,

yeah, this is it. This is how it ends mission. So how far away from the target were you? We were, they put us 300 meters off. That's actually not bad. Right. But there was a rise, a hill in between us. So we couldn't see the compound because of limitations. And as soon as we got to the top, you can look down. And by the way, echo Charles. I'm saying 300 meters isn't that bad because I've gotten out of helicopters and been like, Oh, damn it. It's two clicks away with a ridge line. And they landed, you know, when you're in a helicopter, by the way, like a thousand yards is like, a thousand meters is, is 30, 20 seconds. It's like, oh, you want to land?

Yeah, we're in the spot. Yeah, we're there. Yeah, we're there. Okay, boom. They set you down. You just, you just traveled, you know, two kilometers, which is going to take you six hours or four hours to cover on the ground, which you could have covered in 30 seconds out of a helicopter. So 300 meters and there's a rise there. To the top, I looked down, I was part of the breach element, and then the assault element is gathering on the outside of the compound and there's no breaches there, you know, for the heavy outside.

So I take off running. You know what I mean? I'm running at them. But then I'm trying not to yell, you know, it's me. It's me. I'm coming behind you. Please look. You know, don't turn around and smack me.

And I run past him and I see Tony and Jay trying to put some small charges up against this big massive outdoors. So Afghanistan was very compound where you had an outer 20-foot wall, you know, three feet thick, like dungeon medieval times. And it took a lot to penetrate it effectively. And I smacked their hands. I put on my charge and I said, run because I did the short fuse one. You know what I mean? It's not the, we've got to plan this. It's the big one and the short fuse one.

Yes. Those are two things that go together. I just look at them both whites of their eyes glowing green. and I said, run. You pull it, and as soon as it goes off, you run in, there was, they had a log on the back of the doors, the two outer doors, I see it flipping through the sky. You know what I mean?

And then you're like, and you're crying because this is, this is how it ends, right? This is, this is everything you had hoped for. And you run into the compound and you begin, you know, your process of just making your breach. And I came up to the window. I raked and braked. and threw in a flashbang

and it hit something and dropped right into the threshold there and exploded. And then the salt element runs past me and goes to the first door, blows in and it was a donkey inside the building in a small area. So there's, you know, 10 of salters.

But you took that donkey by surprise. To hell, he started kicking. How do you put that on the Purple Heart? Right? I had to say, I had to say one of us, We come on this building. We're in Iraq. We come on this building.

And, you know, we had this big plan. And, you know, I'm the assault force commander. So I'm probably the number two guy to get to the door. I kind of step back, let the boys go in. And, you know, all of a sudden I hear like, you know, I get in there. It's a stable. It's like they had been using this building as a stable.

And there's a bunch of freaking donkeys in there. And the target was approximately 12 feet to my right, the actual target building. So we did a little transition. but yeah, those animals be funny sometimes. Well, it gets weirder. Okay. Just getting warmed up.

More happens. So Tony, who was my team sergeant, root of a man, was the all-army weightlifter in Europe, hands as thick as sausages, smart like tractor. Brilliant guy. We finally go around because it was a fail-breached. I like him already. Go around the other side. We breach in.

It was a long hallway. and then you go to the first door and it had a blanket over it. So once again, what training exercise is that to even conceive it? So you push it aside, you rush in, and it's just nothing but it's squishy. And there's no furniture and you're just like bouncing in a bouncy house. Like, what the heck is this? And they had stacked carpets up. And that's how they had beds.

And there was no person in there. But all of a sudden we started seeing movement in the corner. We're like, oh, crap. And now you're under nods. your visions are differently, depths are differently. And we go to drawback and we see these little hands pull this carpet, which is a blanket up, and she sits up and this little girl. And she starts screaming and crying.

You're like, you ever watch cops? You know what I mean? And you're like, oh, crap, dad, spry in the other room. You know, what do you do now? There's no scenario where you now have civilians. And Tony starts moving into another corner and they had something stacked and he think it's the body, so he starts kicking and, you know, beating up grain sacks. But then you go and you say, do you leave the person there or do you keep going through?

And so when we get out to the middle, other assaulters that come in, but then the building, you know, has a fire going on. What are you going to do? Right? So I ended up with this little girl on my hip outside, you know, directing the cell during combat. They're finishing off in the corner. Now you're an SSE, part of the building's on fire. All of a sudden you recall that there is a bank of computers and Therai's cell phones. You know, now let's get back into burning building.

This is why we're here. And let's start picking our way through that, right? Then you start your collection points and you find Mama had abandoned everything. So you bring the kid over to Mama. It's all these things become the truth that we experienced from then on. And, you know, from before that, it was always, you know, let's train as you fight. No, no, that's not how you're going to fight. And so we had to adapt very quickly.

Yes, some of those things, you know, eventually, because I ended up running the training out here for the West Coast Seals. And we had civilian actors we'd hire. We had women, Arabic speaking women. middle-aged women that would, you know, be yelling and screaming. Then we got to a point where we would just want to do things that the guys would not expect. So, you know, I tell my cadre, like, hey, you know, let's get, give them something to think about. I remember I'm standing outside in a hallway and I see where there's a target out in the desert and I see like the assault train get to a room and they like open the door and like there's a couple

stutter steps, which you don't see a lot of stutter steps. You know, at this point in training, you don't see a lot of us. I see a couple of stutter steps. I'm like, and then like, oh, hey, uh, uh, and it, not, not a get down, not, I'm like, what did my guys put in there? So I walk up and I, it was ridiculous. My guys had two guys in there dressed up like clowns and they were having a pie eating contest.

So that's what these guys walked in on. And the thing is, as funny as that story isn't as stupid as it is, just like you just said, what do you do? Yeah. Is, if someone's sitting there with a clown outfit on and they have a pie in their hand, what do you do with that? person. How do you handle that? And the fact of the matter is there's going to be things in combat that might as well be a clown, two clown sitting eating a... Because it shocks your brain

the same way. Because it shocks your brain. You couldn't have conceived of this idea and you're going to have to do something about it. And like I said, we're talking about the maturity of us as war fighters. You went into a room. There's a little girl in there and you're like, wait, how is this even happening? It shocked your brain because... And it's so obvious. What? There's children in Afghanistan. I know that's like, of course there's going to be children in these buildings. We didn't think of those things as obvious as they are.

And so I thought that was really important. And that's why I think, you know, the way that we eventually adjusted our training was it was, and I was having a conversation with some seals the other day, is the training might not be exactly what you're going to see in theater. But it has to be training that provokes you to have to think. and make decisions. And if you can make a decision in this urban environment and you can make a decision in this jungle environment and you can make a decision in this CQC environment,

well, then when you get in this environment so you still can go through those same protocols to make a decision at that time. So it's a lot of lessons that we learned. Well, one thing I took away is on an objective, if you're the assault leader or the, you know, troops are major or whatever senior level leadership is resisting the temptation to be,

the leader in the door because you need to be the logic leader what's going on on smelling things this is going too easy oh oh let's start coordinating let's move people to the left and right because you know everybody will get sucked in to the noise and if you're not a mature logic leader sitting back you know letting and hearing and smelling and i call it you know the x ring and the 10 ring and this eight ring and nine ring, it takes a lot of leadership and experience to, you know, look at those as well.

Yeah. And even that story I just told about we were hitting that target and ended up being a stable. Even when I told that story, I was probably the number two or three guy, get to the door. And there's, you can't,

sometimes you just end up there, but just taking a step back. And my guys knew if they saw me and I was doing something that it was going to engage me in a, minor tactical scenario, whether it's prisoner handling or doing room entries. Look, do you got to do room entries? Of course. But we're approaching the target.

It's really easy for me to take a step back. Guys, fill in that spot. And that way, I'm not the number one, two, three, four, five guy. Yeah. And now by the time, oh, they're shooting inside or there's not shooting inside or there's donkeys. And I can say, okay, if there's donkeys in this building, it's probably not the building we're supposed to be hitting.

And there's a building right next to us that looks almost the same. Let's hit that one. And I can make that call. Whereas if I'm in there in a in a in a in a donkey fight, I'm not making any decisions. I'm not thinking. So those are important things to learn about. So that's that's the first big mission. How did it how did it conclude?

Do you guys roll up a bunch of computers and the Raya phones? A bunch of things and it turned into a special forces selection event because one of the events you have to carry these crates right full of you know, ammo and stuff and your hands are bleeding. And so now you're your your post mission, you're consolidating. you only have one hour to be there, right, because of the distance and everything. And if you didn't make the helicopter in one hour, it's 24 hours later reset. So you're like, okay, now you're the time master, right? And that guy's calling out time. We move to our rendezvous location.

You don't know who else is encountered or what's going on. And the first helicopter that comes in crashes his front landing gear takes off. So now you're down one. okay let's cycle in the second one who's a priority let's put you know some people on here and some objects it comes uh the third helicopter quit in the air refused land so now you're down to three helicopters so all these scenarios were true and then luckily we had one marine 53 with triple engines that could go you know beyond tort that stuffed the rest of the assault force in there and we took off and went home and uh

unwound. How was the opt tempo after that one? Every third night. And so you guys got into a good groove. Yeah, every third night. One objective was the hornet's nest, right? And it was very complex.

It was multiple buildings. Some went in behind the mountain because the helicopter wash and walked in and staged. We took in vehicles because it was in the middle of town. And that objective, we started, you know, seeing there were people on it.

So you're starting to hear chatter that you've got active. And then there's the question, do we just bomb it and soup it up? Or do we keep going? So they said keep going. And we, you know, moved into the compound. And instantly somebody came running out and you grab a hold of them. And so it begins. And there was maybe 24 assaulters, took out 22 guys.

It was over in a minute and a half. What were the 22 guys doing? It was a schoolhouse, and they had thought that we wouldn't take it down. So people had learned things we would or wouldn't do, you know, based on how we articulate ourselves at times. They had taken vehicles, so there were 17 SUVs, a couple, you know, anti-aircraft guns. So everything said that that's a meeting place. and when you go running into the school, it was an open compound.

We came into the back, and they were already outside talking to each other. And so it was on. So you caught them off guard? Yeah. Instantly it was on. And so I went down, got pinned down, you know,

with some guys that were firing outside the windows because it's a compound. And Tony and another guy went in the very first room. and the number two guys he's going to go in. Somebody came out the next room beside him, so he got caught right then. And he ended up in the first room by himself. And that's where he did hand-to-hand.

Four guys killed him all. Basically broke his collarbone, you know. So now the fire fight's on. There's probably about seven rooms altogether. When he did hand-to-hand, what was his weapons? So if you run into a room and somebody's beside you, you're coming this way, they just grab on your gun. They got hold of his gun, huh?

So he shot one with a pistol. Because the number two man didn't come in, because the number two man was previously occupied. The next guy came out of the next room. I mean, it was just absolute. So he ended up with a one-man room entry, and somebody literally grabbed his barrel, which we do that shit to people all the time in training.

Like he grabbed their barrel. So now you're undernots, right? You're alone. Firefights are happening, you know, simultaneously multiple everything, right then and there. And so I go into the next room. I remember I didn't have time to put a charge on. So I kicked. It kind of came open. I threw a flashbang, but as I'm flashbangs out of my hand, I look down, I see a guy laying on the ground with his gun up at me. So I immediately step on his barrel.

And then you start going into the room. And there's about seven guys in there. And they're all trying to shoot out the window or out the back. And, uh, so you surprised him to the point. And, uh, so you surprised them to the point that you got to shoot these guys in the back that they were shooting out the window. Yeah. I mean, it was full on. Yeah. Nice. By the time we came into the center of the compound and we started our first engagement, they started

shoot, I mean, we're talking seven or eight meters. Now, you know, when you start shooting AK, it lifts up, right? So instantly, everybody's squatting now. They're in a duck walk because, you know, the guys are getting shot at. And you literally go into this room. and they're all trying to face the windows. So you're actually in the center of the room. Yeah, that's awesome.

Engaging that way. So once again, how do you train to that? Then the next room, the one guy we took off, he had his hands up. And I say it proceeded the gun trucks came around. There was guys fighting on the outside now. So now we had some outside contact. We had to clear through. The 1.30 started spotting sprinters, which,

Later on, you'd learn that the actual leader, they disengage quickly and make a run for it. Did you guys have any wounded? Not on that compound. The one up north got somebody shot. And that was like what number mission was that in the, or how long? Three. Oh, that was number three. Yeah.

So that was a, that was an quick escalation. Yes. Into the. So you know when you hit, right? That's it. Other ones we would hit and the ESOs were. there for 24 hours a lot of chatter it was it was a crossing station we're waiting for you know somebody particular so you had to do a change out of positions uh one of the guys

got a kidney stone so imagine the medic trying to bring him in and out because he's a commo guy I mean just things it freaked snowstorm they're sent back a pitcher they're covered you know foot of snow on them they're like suckers right I don't want to be in this so no one So that was Afghanistan until it Big Army came in and said turn the war back on We need somebody to shoot at And Anaconda happened And also while this is happening

You had the guys from 525 The horse soldiers 595 595 Yeah The horse soldiers Those are your buddies and they're run in the whole, what is it, Horse Soldiers book, 12 Strong book,

well, became 12 Strong book, became the 12 Strong movie. And now there's an actual real book, not real book, but there's a book that was actually written by Mark. Yes. And Bob, who have decided that, if someone's going to tell their story,

it should be the people that tell the story. So the first foray, once again, cultures, And it kind of wasn't in our culture to talk and, you know, think about storytelling because we were still in. I mean, Iraq war and everything. The first one that came in, actually, while we were all still there, was Robin Moore. And he had wrote the book, the Green Beret's a French connection.

So he's kind of like the patriot writer of Greenbray story. So he heard this and he came in, but he was very, very old. And he had, he was co-opted by somebody that kind of led him astray. and so his book he produced was half washed and half made up half everything because nobody wanted to talk or say anything. And then when they finally somebody was approaching to command, I'll just use his name D, you know, started to get about a day's worth of the story. And it was all fake names. And then it was like, I don't know if we want to talk anymore. And they left.

So that book is small percent of one position of the story. Nobody's went in and nobody's gone back and took all the unconventional teams and the DA team and try to place it at one time. So there's never been a totality of stories because none of the guys knew what other guys did. So once you get back to the team room, you know, you don't talk about fight club. So nobody talked about what you did or what you did or what you did. war just continued. Yeah. And at the time,

like, you care, but you don't care that much. No. It's like, I got my own story. It's like, oh, cool. Oh, yeah, I heard you guys did some good shit.

Oh, yeah, we did. That's cool. That's about the conversation. Like, maybe there's one little, oh, yeah, hey, make sure you put your magazines over here. Don't put your radio over there. But other than that,

it's funny, the SOG guys from Vietnam. Like, they had no idea what. They didn't even know each other in many cases. Nope. Nope. Same thing. With a team room, you're isolated in a, that's it.

I was only on two teams for 17 years. God. 12 guys, that's it. But the book that is out now, yeah, swords of lightning. So Mark and Bob,

you know, we've become friends. Mark came over to our unit after he left, 595. And that's how our friendship became closer and closer. So you do know each other and your kids play ball together

and you're just in the same neighborhood. And fast forward when we started this business, this, hey, you know, Mark, do you want to go to a distillery? Yeah, let's go to a distillery. Hey, I know somebody that's an S-A-S. Let's go to England and see a distillery in England. So this thing organically, but then I was there in Tampa when somebody called up and said, hey, you know, they're doing a movie.

They're like, what do you mean? Well, you know, they got actors and everything. Are you guys advising? They're like, what movie you're talking about? And literally flew out there on a Friday, went to set on a. a Saturday. The lawyer's asked in a leave by Saturday afternoon. And that was that. Yeah. I just was part of it. So he wanted to write a book saying, okay, everybody else is telling these stories. Let me put it down. That's awesome. I was listening to an interview with Mark and I just

was a part of a movie. So I've written a bunch of kids books, got made into a movie. But one of the things that Mark was saying is the same thing that you just said, which is the movie had begun filming when Mark showed up. And look, are there some changes you can make when the movie's begun filming? Kind of. But it's like the frame of the house is there. And maybe you can select what color paint you want on the cabinets. But other than that, man, the whole, the foundation, the room layout, the plumbing, the electrical, you're not moving that stuff once. It's already been kind of bought and paid for. Once again, it's, we don't understand the process culturally in SF.

You know, I can talk to lots of other friends that have been in the business and they understand when they're involved and when they're not. The movie, they told them at the end, it's a movie, not a documentary. So sometimes you're trying to question, you know, it wasn't exactly like this. No, no, no. A movie, you need love interests and you need a little tension and there's about two prime characters, you know, so after the movie was made, it ran into some controversy. Obviously, the name horse soldiers, the Wayne family, had owned IP, and they went and release it.

So they had to change the name, which was a big no-no. That's why it got changed, huh? And nobody was going to participate after it was done, but the command said, hey, we actually, Green Berets aren't doing so good, you know. Recruiting perspective and all that stuff. and media wise, let's embrace this movie and there's some resistance. It's like, eh. And then they said, we'll let you go to the red carpet premiere. And we're like, oh, then the wives were like, oh, red carpet. Did you say Chris Hemsworth? And so it's like, okay, they got us. And then how this

business started we're in today is we literally were traveling the world just as friends making some whiskey for fun with some other veterans. And we didn't know if it was going to be a business or not. So we kind of like the, I hope you were getting, even though you didn't know it was going to be a business where we getting tax write-offs, where we're writing off trips to England and whatnot?

We didn't make enough money to get a tax right off. You know what I mean? It's like, okay. But we said, we're only coming to the red carpet party if we can bring some of this whiskey we're making. And they're like, sure. So we literally went,

poured some in a bottle, printed off on a laser printer, a label, and called it Horse Soldier and took it to the red carpet premiere. That's how the business started. Who do you say owned the rights to horse soldier? Wayne family, 1959, the horse soldiers. Oh, dang.

And then how did you print the label off and get permission to use the name for the whisks, the bourbon? We didn't know what you're supposed to do or not do, that you're not supposed to transport alcohol across state lines and sure, blah, blah, blah. We just learned how to make it and we made it for fun. So we were like, oh, here we go. How about once you were going for it, though, did you have to buy that name from that? Oh, yeah.

So the journey of starting a business, right? So we were in transition. Some guys were still in. Bob was still in. He was the head of selection. Mark was still playing contractor warrior overseas. So we were in different places. And we started going to craft distilleries

because it was fun thing for friends to get together and go see how vodka was made or rum. We'd done a 10-day horse and mule train through Yellowstone. And we gave up the horses and we're going out the Westgate. And we saw a craft distillery sign that said free tours and tastings. We're like, this is what men do, right? We mosey up to the bar. This is what men do before they get arrested.

Free whiskey. I don't think that far ahead. I'm in the moment. And it was fun because the wife came out and it's a little bar and she started pouring some things and you're, of course, sipping it. And she goes, ah, this is potato vodka. You're like, sure, can I get another one of those? No, no, try potato flake vodka. Oh, I could taste.

I get this difference. But one of the wives and co-founder Elizabeth started looking at the bottle and talked to the wife about the label and the texture and the things on it. And then the husband came out and said, would you like to see the stills? And you go behind the rope and you see mechanical and engineering and what time do you show up to start this? So we literally got back to the Airbnb checked out and hit every craft distillery from, West Yellowstone back to Tampa, Florida. It took us three weeks on a journey. And no DUIs.

No, no, no. Because we would stop. We're mature. You know what I mean? We would, uh, and, uh, we called up Mark and he said, hey, I got an SAS buddy that owns a distillery in Scotland. So we flew to Scotland, went to Whiskey University, went up, you know, space side. Is whiskey, is Whiskey University a real thing?

Or are you just, there's a real thing? Yeah. So we don't know these things. You don't know the call. You just scratch your way into it. And so we took official classes on nosing and tasting the history of whiskey without the E, which is the English version, right? And we go to see what tourism sees at a distillery. You kind of walk this velvet guided rope.

And then you go through the curio shop at the end and you buy three bottles for your buddies. You go to the next one. And then when we got to Thorso, the northernmost city in Scotland where the Vikings came, there's nothing to do. but work at that distillery and go to the bar. Work at the distillery, go to the bar. Right? It's like oil dregs. And we learn how to turn them on.

You know, the Scots are very efficient. There's no task left unmanaged with them. And we left. We came home. Somebody said, what's the difference between whiskey in Scotland and Irish whiskey? So we said, screw it. Let's go to Ireland. It's been a month in Ireland.

To Teeleing and Thorsa or Kelbegan. and just would knock on the door and say, can we work here for a week? And so we came back, we went into Kentucky. Can I work at a warehouse? On the weekend, we would just go and say, a bunch of broke vets, man. This is interesting.

Can we just come, just pick your brain? And everybody was open. And so we started forming a company called American Freedom Distillery and my business partner, mentor, John Coco, previous generation Green Beret agency, him and another buddy started an insurance company, highly successful. Daddy Warbuck's successful, right? And he understood business. So we formulated it, and we started making a couple barrels, and that's when the movie hit. So we went up there, did the movie, came back from the movie. The next day, we went to a charity event,

and the owners of ABC Liquor in Florida heard that we were somehow, how part of this movie, we heard that he owned liquor stores, and he said, I'll take 50 cases. Nice. Now you had to go make 50 cases. Yes. Literally, flew a Legionaire, went back there, filled up some jugo bottles, printed off some labels, licked him on, drove them. Across state lines? No.

No. No. They arrived. What's the statute of limitations on state lines? Son of a bitch. The mistakes. So, but we didn't know. So we just learned how to make it.

Now you don't know that, you know, what distribution is, what sales is. We didn't even have an invoice. You don't know any of this stuff. And that first year, you know, we were educated. We formed alliances. We formed partnerships. And today we're the fastest growing bourbon in the country. I'm building a seven million gallon facility.

It'll make 100,000 barrels a year, which is a million cases, which is the size of Woodsford. from a bunch of guys who knew nothing about anything. And that's where are you guys building that? In Kentucky. Did you guys buy the land already? Yeah. So you start knowing when you go, there's a, to get started usually by somebody else's as a contract distilling.

I have about 30,000 barrels aging right now. And that's a whole separate business because four to six years to eight years has to age. and then I have my horse soldier bourbon as a brand, which we did 150,000 cases last year. So there's, we realized that if we, if I bought a barrel from somebody else and I paid $1,000, if I made it myself, I make for $500, I'm losing that profitability.

So at what point in your business plan do you start to transition to think 25 years, 100 years out? If I can only integrate all of my production, manufacturing and then my sales side takes over once it's age appropriate so we bought an old golf course in the smallest town in kentucky away from all the big distilleries and uh covid hit oh so what was a plan to build a distillery a hotel 5,000 person amphitheater because we like to think big um-hmm game of thrones right we don't think small uh it would have cost us 150 to build then it got up to $450 million.

And so we had to break apart the big idea into little chunks. And now the build is about halfway done. We've got the tanks in. We've got everything. We're going to open up the 4th of July, 2026. Nice. 250th anniversary of America. America.

American dream. Screw it. That's pretty bad for amateurs. Yeah. Right on. deviation there. Rewind a little bit. Let's bring you back to the military.

You're you get done. So you get done with that deployment. Yeah. What's your, what's your next? We get back. You stay there at the same at fifth group. Oh yeah.

Fifth group still. Still in the SIF. Still in the SIF. Already heard rumblings getting ready for Iraq. We, because we had already been in the 90s into Kuwait, we already knew certain elements had, you know, whether it was WMD or whether it was.

unconventional or regular warfare, strategic reconnaissance, those ideas were probably just blown off the dust. And so by November, teams started getting ready and going into Jordan and Kuwait and positioning by this, you know, early February. The missions were set and by the invasion teams were already going inside to whatever. So it's now 03. Yeah. So you lead the invasion from multiple fronts. If you recall it only took 90 days once again from you know and were you over there on the push up? Yeah Nice and what were you guys doing? One mission still you know sensitive enough Then that problem was solved and it became

You started picking up either oars either you were gonna do the Jessica Lynch mission or another force was well shit They got it There we started because the war was just over within a flash. What do you do? You know what I mean? They we were literally in Baghdad going to the market hanging out in shops, you know. Yeah. And there was that weird time.

Checking on facilities. Yeah, there was that weird time where it was like there wasn't an insurgency. There wasn't it was kind of. Like you said, you were going out in the market. Yeah. It was quiet. And we didn't understand because we had bypassed. you know, a lot of things in high sight that hopefully we understand now, but we don't, you know,

all these compounds where these munitions were that became the feeders and fuels, you know, all of these things we didn't secure, we were such a rush just to exist and occupy. And then from there, once you had the lack of structured governance, the people began to revert to stripping things, so government buildings, all these things, so you couldn't go back and reinsert government institutions because, you know, they were already degrading. So that lasted April, May, came back for two months, and then Djibouti. Jibouti, Djibouti. And what was Djibouti like?

Take your hand. Call it the rim of the asshole. That's Djibouti right there. What we saw was this festival. phenomena of foreign fighters. So if you think historically how people migrated for the Hajj, how they supplied other jihadi things throughout generation, there's this kind of out of, you know, theater, out of travel network of people coming across. And as things started devolving in Iraq, elements could fight them there, but how do you pick them apart before

where they get there and understand the networks that are facilitating them. So the mission was basically Djibouti was the last long landmass before Yemen. So did we have a presence there and could we understand the networks? It was all more deep reconnaissance, small network, disbanding, you know, understand the flow of pattern. And then you went back to Iraq again. Yes. A couple times? Yeah.

Okay. Two times. So that was, end of 03, early, 04 was Djibouti. Had a great time. Different. Now chaos reigned. And they decided to break the company apart and put the company down south in a traditional SF, you know, regional orientation. And we had Escondaria to Alcut to Karbalan.

the Jaff, the whole southern region, probably starting in July of 2004. July of 2004, okay. And then what was the opt-tempo like for that? Every other night. I think I did 90 complete hits and missions and... And did you have a partner force? Or just you guys? Mixtures.

Okay. So if we, if it was something small, local, right? we had either Hilloswatt or you had the Swanese. It depends on what fluff. The 36 commandos were just getting started. ICTF was just getting started. And if as battles were progressing,

whether it was Fallujah or Al-Qut on the west side, right, the Iranians coming over, then you would assemble, we would bring a more dedicated element for the precision of the problem or if you just need nugs and thugs you know you'd bring some local militia in with you

right just to keep the peace and keep people out of your way and do your thing so I mean every third day was you know is this a bomber and we know the neighborhood or is this you know people creeping across the Iran and we're seeing a lot of personalities pop up and then it just

unleashed in Al Qut and you say you were formulated like a Or you were structured like a normal ODA at this point? Yeah, so we went back to 12-man teams in, you know, regional locations assisting the, the fun term, the battlefield, you know, space owner. Why did they do that to the SIF? I think by then the national elements were so dedicated and they were building their empire of capabilities.

So they're putting you guys out of a job. Yeah. Well, we're just moving you to the other job. Other job. Back to, you know, but we would then come together when necessary. So the elements down south. So you had once again some major battles, Najaf was happening at the time, the cemetery battles. They did the SOs counter Chets and doing things.

You had the Iranian streaming across Al-Qut area. You had, you know, Fallujah just igniting. And what was your role in the ODA at this point? I'm back to Team Sergeant. Awesome. And then Troop Sergeant Major. So when we assemble like the Wonder Twins, you know what I mean? You call up the banner and you say, all right, you know, let's meet somewhere.

Let's either bring ourselves, you know, unilateral or let's bring a hill of swat or let's bring a Marine. The Marines want to go in somewhere. So, okay, let's do the Death Star, as I like to call it. And bring in a big package and take over a whole kind of noncompliant village. Yeah. Was there any major challenges? during that deployment? Coordination, cooperation.

The challenges I look backwards is I didn't know where we were going until a week before we got there. So now you're blind. How do you set up assets and work networks and do things? We were on the tear lines. We were having that discussion.

You know what I mean? The cracks. So we were on the crack by southern Baghdad, you know, going south. And that's, you know, where people were squirting. They were conducting activity in one area and they were squirting back for rest and relaxation in another.

And these elements, because the action and activities, they would all storm and put bases and, you know, think that's where the fight, but really the people organizing that and coordinating it were, you know, coming back and back in these remoter locations, suburbs for effect. So when we started to unscatch that and uncover that, it awoke in a whole other area.

So it's never, once again, where everybody wants you to focus the problem area. It's where we're humans too. We go back and reset and refight, reorganize, recommunicate, refund each other. And we started peeling apart those networks so they couldn't relax. And how long was that deployment? Were you guys on a four month? Seven months? Yeah.

Was that standard for you guys? Yeah. Okay. Because that's, I know some other elements we're doing four month deployments. The seals, we've always kind of done what? the Marine Corps does, which is be aligned with the Big Navy, which is basically a six or seven month deployment. So it sounds like you guys did the same thing. Yeah. And so you get home from that deployment. Are you still a single dude at this point? I've, I've been lucky in love

many times, right? No. I think it was my fourth divorce by then. Okay. So you've been racking and stacking. Yeah. I enjoyed being gone a lot, right? I've been married to my wife now since 17, 18, 20 years. So it also takes the right type of person when you say I'm here and then, you know, a month later and then you're gone. The hard part is just getting your relationship back with your kids. Yeah. Do you come home from that deployment and then it's just reload for another one? So in between those times, I ran the advanced urban combat school.

So now you've got other teams. So you get into the training cycle of getting them ready. And then, you know, things are really starting to downturn. So if you think about, you know, Ramadi, we had lost some guys in Ramadi in 2004 pretty hard. And they were, some guys were trained, you know, really good and went to the schoolhouse for direct action. They tried to give it to their ODA and they were caught in a circumstance, right? So we realized that if some of these guys are going to fight in this urban environment, they needed to advance their skill set, how to maneuver, how to climb walls, how to be surrepetitious entry versus explosive, all these things.

So we really brought our skill set to the other ODAs. And then I went back for another four to five months into Baghdad. So now I'm off the team. I'd been there too long. I'm at the schoolhouse running that, but then the command says, hey, come in and support us with the ICTF and commandos and help professionalize their, you know, training pipeline, their acquisition pipelines. So now you're making a force not for convenience and partnership, but you're making something sustainable. So I went and helped out with that. And what year did you go help out with the ICTF?

Five. Okay. Because I was supposed to, when I was a troop commander, tasking to commander, I was supposed to go and take over this for the seals. because it was both, they had both seals and green berets with the ICTF in Baghdad. And so they were all working together. And then I was supposed to go and take over the seals that were there. And I went on pre-deployment site survey, but this was in early 06, probably like March of 06, went there, met with the ICTF, went out some ops with them, and then was all ready to do the turnover.

And then we came home and then they sent us to Ramadi instead, which was. It's awesome, but that was my interaction with the ICTF. And the ICTF was a squared away unit. Definitely for Iraqis a squared away unit, but it was interesting because they had like our weapons. They had night vision, like. Many means. Yeah, they were.

And I'm sure you've heard this, but the guys that the ICTF that went up and fought in Missouille took massive casualties, but they were also brave and they fought really hard. and they fought with a lot of courage, which was a real testament to what all those green berets and seals did to and what you guys did to put that force together and give them a culture of courage and commitment that, you know, we didn't see a lot from other units

in the Iraqi military. So that was a real testament to that idea of making a longstanding group. And it's unfortunate that they did suffer such heavy capital. Well, they did. Once again, I think we build them and there for a while, you couldn't do the mission unless you had a partner force. So people kind of, you know, hey, look, at these four, is that enough to get the yes? And then you try to build them as a competent leadership, but then you still tickle the close air support and the intel. You know, they're not ready to be self-sustaining yet. And the first time probably was they're planning their own missions. You want them to go. Maybe we'll advise to the side. And then, you know, that's what messed that up. You know what I mean? We've lost all those lessons, even to this day, you know, how to recount. What worked, what didn't, what will we do better?

And, you know, now it's gone. What do you do when you get done with that? So I'm off the team now. I'm a senior E8. typically if you're getting ready to go for a company start major they send you to a start major academy for a year i didn't want to go i'm i'm a little out of uh you know we're talking seven months since nine eleven you're in constant combat and this opportunity came up to go to tampa and i'm from florida anyways okay so i get assigned to the headquarters

so imagine going from the lowest tactical on the edge of level a major was important a colonel was invisible but the god yeah now you walk into a four-star headquarters and there were only uh 17 soft nCOs in the entire headquarters wow they didn't know what to do with us you had kind of had to find your own place yeah so i did not know that yeah how many people are at that command thousands thousands and all retired you know yeah over five, those sixes and, you know, four star, two, three stars, four, you know, two stars, you just go down, like the Richter scale just comes down. So there was an individual I was introduced to.

I'll tell you two funny stories. One was a guy named Ed Winters. And he had just left Siltim Six and he came to Tampa and they started this task which called the Interagency Task Force, right? So by then you start to see what JSOC was doing with their capabilities and all of the reservoir dog colors sitting in one place sharing the problems of the mission, right? So they tried to recreate that. So Ed was the first one.

So we began to take people funding, you know, capabilities and throw them in a dog pile and see how we could support elements forward or support, you know, U.S. had a problem at the time we could encounter anybody on the battlefield and win, but why couldn't we as a country use whole of a nation and share and support information and degrade networks before they even got on the battlefield? And so that was the big idea. And so that became the genesis of the Interagency Task Force. And how long did you do that job for?

2010. So six to ten, four years. So winners and then Scotty Miller came. That's where we became friends. And then had an Air Force, Bob Holmes, and then Frankie Schroyer, who left the DEA. So I was an enlisted advisor, so people would plug in and out. And we began to have separate cells. And that's where I met Jim, right?

We had a foreign fighter cell. We had nefarious network cell. We had defense or counter finance. And you started picking apart these problems. because there was nobody else really unified to looking at looking at them from that holistic viewpoint and then after that did you retire after that I did and how was that decision uh it was time right so here I am I'm working for a three-star equivalent I'm in a eight half the time I'm in a suit walking around because as soon as you put on a uniform people judge you especially if you're at

a lower rank and my family came it's the first time they read you off the rolls and say what you did. And then the next day, I was nobody. So like most people, I worked, somebody approached me, and they had a contract supporting, at the time, was McChrystal overseas, and that was evaluating how Afghanistan was going 10 years into it. So I spent about another nine months in Afghanistan

walking the battlefield like a Ronan. I could go to any meeting, get on any helicopter, or walk any foot patrol just to assess why. And I think you came up with an interesting assessment. The viewpoint that you took of this was interesting. Yes, I got to speak with old tribal commanders, people on the ground, their question is, why are we still here?

I thought in a beginning you said you would come, you would avenge, we can understand that, now turn over the country and Afghan will become Afghanistan. And as I would walk the battlefield, I would go on a patrol and I watched some kids get blown up and watch the medics didn't even know how to apply morphine. You just start seeing these things. You're confused on why we're still here. And you start going into these jock centers and watching young commanders make decisions and watching people run out of ammo in the first 30 seconds. And you're like, you know, why haven't we evolved?

People have transitioned. They show up to the new same location. that an American has been at for 10 years but not know any people or anything. It was just I didn't understand it. So as I started to assess myself and what was going on, at the end, I printed this presentation. It was very basic and it was just a U.S. soldier and an Afghan soldier, and it was the cost on one side or the other.

How much does it cost us to fill the soldier? How much does it cost the Taliban? So it was an economic assessment. and the American soldier 1.3 million, you know, education, high school equipment, whatnot. Taliban soldier, Rusty, AK, $7. And I just went down the pipeline from vehicles to a Toyota high lux, you know, a million and a half dollar MRAP versus. And at the end, you know, we're in this battle because we can sustain it economically. but yet these people who don't have economic, technological, advanced educations,

all this other stuff truly have control of the country. So we need to reassess what we're doing here. Did this make it anywhere? I presented it and I quit government. They vowed never to be a government contractor to do anything again. Did it get received at all? Did anyone nod their head and say, hey? Oh, they did.

I mean, I had the senior relationships at the end to go, where is this going? And, I mean, it was, it was presented at the intellectual level, right? It wasn't like you would do an assessment of a unit after an exercise, and, you know, you should make four decisions better, and you should, you know, incorporate this technology better. It wasn't that. It was just intellectually, how are we still here? And have we achieved, because being there the first time was to root out Al Qaeda,

unseat the Taliban from power, which was allowing them to facilitate training and planning in Afghanistan to 10 years later. We've applied, you know, all of these things. We've backed away from some of the simple realities of Afghanistan probably needs 200 years in the oven. And their solution is something they have to create for themselves and manage and fight the way they're going to fight. So if we're training them to look like us, think like us, use our tools, and act like us as soon as we take that out, it reverts back. So. So when you say you quit government employment at that time, like it was, was this a huge kind of epiphany moment in your life? We were, we were. So how the next phase happened is, uh, I was on the board of the Greenbrae

Foundation in trying to help them raise money. And we were having, you know, our storytelling problem, right? The seals are very good. They have great post seal people that will go out and encourage people, you know, to raise money for, do events for, whatever special forces are like mountain men, you know, we're huff and we're quiet and we don't want to talk about anything and so we were seeing more guys getting injured as government contractors because if you get injured or shot or blown up your treatment and your evacuation is completely different so these guys were now you're saying as the green bray foundation you were you were helping more guys that have been wounded as contractors than you were guys that were getting wounded as we had enough problems with

guys on active duty, right? And we were finding the cracks like in vitro fertilization. Guys were wanting to store some. And if they lost something, they could, you know, still create families, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, all the stuff that VA wasn't ready for or alternative physical therapies, anything. You wanted encouraging, had to pay for it outside of any normal VA or medical system. We had guys shot through the neck, wanted nasal stem cell surgery so it could rekindle atrophy from the inside. He's still alive today. Rami Camargo,

business owner, quadriplegic. So all of a sudden you're getting calls that the guy you talked to a month ago with Sart Major something now is Mr. And he got, you know, a contract with somebody and then got shot.

And now, you know, he doesn't have the funds and he's let go by the business and he's trying to get some medical care. He's a workman comp's claim. So you're doing that. And this was after you finished that commander's advisory and assistance team.

This is when you go to the Greenberry Foundation. And you're out there raising money, seeing all the problems that guys are facing. So as you're raising money, you see, you know, men and women that are the corporate pillars that become successful entrepreneurs. So you start to get to know them as you develop relationships. So Greenberry skill 101, right? Get to know them, you know, help them. with your problem and they become generous. But I become fascinated on how they grew their wealth and took advantage of the American dream.

And the word entrepreneurism, you know, was an idea, theory. And so I created a program called The Next Ridge Line, so metaphorically how I'm getting from here over there through the valleys and the draws and the haulers. And if we can only, you remember the Rambo movie at the end? when your kid, Rambo was about the knife. You know what I mean? The running and evading and standing up to Johnny Law, but at the end, he's crying, saying,

I can't even get a job and fly helicopters and pumping gas. I can't even get a job pumping gas. Echo, you're going to have to run a quote right now? Is that what we're doing? Huh? You're talking about first blood, but... Yeah, he's talking about first blood. So now you're older, you're like,

well, how can we be this highly trained and skilled? And then the only job you walk into immediately is back into combat. but you don't realize you don't have the support you had. Why aren't we enabling this generation to become entrepreneurs? So I created the program. We put in some money and on the stage we're in New York City. And I had Roger Ailes ahead of Fox at the time.

Give the richest guy in the room an award. He'll bring his rich buddies. It's a nonprofit 101. And I literally dropped the microphone. I said, I quit. And if I can't walk off the stage and follow this program and start a business with friends, you all deserve your money back. You do that on stage?

Yeah. And that's when we went to Yellowstone to figure out what we're going to do next. And that was the beginning. That was the beginning. How long did it take to go from, you know, when you're like, did you have an idea of, I want to start a business? Yes. It was just a business.

Yep. It could have been sneakers. It could have been hats. Oh, I did it. I did operator with backpacks. T-shirts and everything you see at the shot show and your five friends you're like hey everybody else has got a backpack i just came up with this hold on a second and i said all right so i talked to my friend who's my business partner now coco and i coco is uh was a green beret and

but he's is he older than us yes he was pretty bit he uh was blown up in the first golf war okay i'm a live date is coming up got it got it got it out and we'll go somewhere dark and And probably drink some horse, some horse, some horse, old, don't say it too fast. Okay. Believe me. I know. I get that all the time.

But he, him and another buddy started a very successful insurance business, went public, back down to private, sold it for a lot, started buying Blue Cross, Blue Shield franchises before Obamacare hit. I mean, the epitome of self-made. Nicely done. So I asked him, I said, John, I got these little companies, these ideas. I'm making five bucks here and a hundred bucks there. And these were backpacks and freaking slings and whatever else.

The same. The same. And he goes, what's the margin on that? I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, what are you doing? What's the, what's the access to capital you got right now? He started saying these foreign words. I'm like, hey, hey, he goes, no, no, no, wasting your time.

He had 12 hours in the daytime. Those things you do, I'm going to, I'll talk to you about define the thing that will make the most value for the time and energy and effort you're going to put into it and I said you're a smart guy you and me and he said as soon as I get back from Yellowstone so when he was injured there back then there was no PTSD right there was no survivors guilt there was no things going on but there was a little program called Project Healing Waters and it was started by the Walton family so the Walton's son was actually a silver star Vietnam John Walton yeah he was a Sog guy in Vietnam.

He was with, I mean, he's in a bunch of those books. He's a total stud. So he started a program and John went through it. And every year afterwards, he and his family went to Yellowstone. And he told me as soon as I get back from Yellowstone, you and I will evaluate your businesses. We'll talk about, you know, is this making money, how we can help this? And I said, well, sure, where are you going?

He said, Yellowstone. I said, well, I'd never been. I realized I'd never taken a vacation of substance in 20 years. So he goes, well, why don't you come? And I told him, well, I'm unemployed, so might as well. And we fly fished and climbed the teetons and horseback ride. And did any time, did you guys talk about bourbon at that time? Nope.

Or you're just talking about just life? No, you want to know the great, brilliant answer. his wife Elizabeth who was snow white beautiful perfect snow white on horseback with us guys she's trooper and uh the first night she starts putting on essential oils and rubbing herself down with lotion you're smelling by the campfire you're like and the guy's like what is that what's going on who's got something who's got what's the bears he's like give me all of that so 10,000 dollars of creams and night creams and stuff. You know, he rises out in the night and he puts it up in the bear bag.

And of course, we're giggling, right? We're like, welcome to manhood. And she goes, you men need a line of rugged essential oils. You know what I mean? She's like, and so we talked about. Could be talking about horse soldier lotions right now. Exactly. So you never know.

So you're on a horse. You know, you're just thinking about yourself because you can't talk to anybody. And then you get around the campfire at night and you just be quiet. and silent with each other and you talk about some things could we do and it wasn't until Frick and frack me and Coco saw that sign that said free drinks because we're brothers and we like to have fun and we just looked over and saw Elizabeth just talking to the wife about the labels she was in the perfume industry so she knew packaging labels and that's it it literally started then Then when we got back to Tampa, Coco's parents came over and we just talked more about those

distillery visits and Coco's dad said, you drunks need a hobby and just started unwinding the mysteries of how to make great bourbon. What was the first big step that you took? Because, you know, when you're all chipping in, I don't know, $200 to get the first barrel done or whatever and that's all just fun and where at what point did you go oh this is a little bit of a commitment right now when you put in a million and a half and is that money that you guys raised is that conned okay right you start understanding you know the depth of things you have to put structure around the idea into a business plan which we still follow today and then when we signed our first

distributor agreement and says you have to produce and you have to deliver and it takes 45 days before you get paid. You start to calculate timing a little differently. Then you got quality assurance because you got a consumer product. So things get serious quicker and you need more help. So do you hire people that know the business or do you hire your buddy? So then you hire a buddy and then there's a learning curve. You figure it out.

You meet every day twice a day. Then you take in another million of somebody else's money. So now you've expanded the circle. So going from startup to first money in, friends and family to outside money or first million, then we went into three million. Then we went into a family office for 12 and a half with a $20 million debt instrument. You know what I mean? You can't pretend anymore.

You have to, you know, deliver expectations not only for yourself, your family, but bored outside investors. And so now you're in a competitive mindset, which is exactly where we thrive. Knowledge dominance. If you know more than me, I'm going to seek it. So the growth has been, so where's it at right now? Where we're at right now, we partnered with the Gallo family. So we were at a point where our brand was, people were seen it on the shelves, which means public companies are starting to see you.

They're so big, they can't innovate anymore. Right? They can't build that enthusiasm and exploratory. They can't hip enough. So they just acquire. So you started seeing George Clooney sell for a billion and a half. You started seeing high west these monetary purchases by public companies, but almost all of them are foreign. So when we had Kampari and Beams and Tori, all these people were like, no, we're American.

And so that left a few. And so we started putting together, which this was Coco's realm, was how to build yourself. And we didn't want to sell outright. Because if we sold outright, you're surrendering the true value of what it we could be. But it was ours. And so we went through 30 dating exercises, narrowed it down to 10 exercises, narrowed it down to five. And then can you align culturally? Because once you get into a business partnership, you can't divorce.

Mm-hmm. And one of the companies, some of the companies looking at you, not alcohol companies. Yeah. Like, I'm hedge funds that have spirits portfolios. Got it. These others, you know, it's just a thing in their menu, right? Their committee is told to buy into these certain areas. So when you talk to them, you get it right away.

They don't bring value. So if you look at a business as a marriage, I don't need the money as much as your access to markets, your distribution needs mafia. I say that word. Your family, my family, we get together. We bring capabilities together. So as we went through that, at the final five last one, John, he only has one litmus test. When he meets him, he shakes their hand. He goes, give me your cell number.

Because if I can't call you at two in the morning because I'm having a problem, then I'm dealing with a committee or a financial team or somebody, you know, I don't want that. I want a partnership and too balked and hesitant. fascinated. Finally made our decision, and that was with the Gallo family, and the Gallo family, you know, same rags to riches, immigrant family, build an empire, and they started getting into the spirit space.

They own High Noon and a bunch of other spirits brand, so he knew he had to diversify, and they said, it's your business. How do we help? And so now we're, you know, two restaurants going on, three, a hotel. Where are the restaurants? One's in Tampa. Okay.

So the urban still house, beautiful. It's so high class high in. People think you're vets and they think beer pong, ping pong. I'm like, no. No. No. One in Somerset, Kentucky. There's no beer pong there?

No. No, we've got bison. We break down the barrels for wood fire grills. I've got fresh hot fish. It's beautiful. And then the one in Kentucky, we opened before the facility, and we just bought a building in the stockyards in Fort Worth. Oh, awesome.

So we've partnered with PBR. Nice. So we've built this brand and it's basically origin stories, friends that served together, came home, started a business, you know, made something, you know, we're positioned right. So if you think now with Yellowstone and all this other, you know what I mean, cowboy culture and other stuff, we've kind of hit the right timing to remind. what an all-American company with all-American products is about so either we've been

dead lucky or cleverly smart or a little bit of both we'll take it awesome man uh and then you got one little last little thing you've got these adventures that you guys seem to go on it's like I look at your YouTube channel you're doing D-Day jumps you're doing sailing rate explorations diving in Saipan like what's that all about so You can't take what has been the embers of your life of service, right, and take it out. So every year we always say we've got to do something together as friends and family. So it started, Coco gave us the money because the money he was going to use was to buy a sailboat and he wanted to have a fantasy selling for life. So one day somebody had some sailing lessons.

So he decided to take him and they were part of the Warrior Selling Foundation. and somebody had gifted them a $6 million kind of race yacht. And then they opened up Cuba, so they had a regatta from St. Pete, Florida, to Cuba. And we said, why don't we enter that? Literally took two selling lessons. And we got second place. Damn.

Okay. And so we don't like to lose. This is a green brace sabotage activities going on there. Exactly. Then we hung out in Cuba for, a week and had fun. So then the next year they had a regatta from St. Pete to Isl-Mohara's, which is near Cancun. And so we talked to the same warrior selling. Somebody had donated a carbon fiber race yacht. And we were crushing everybody's soul until we didn't release and

basically almost crashed it, blew out to Spinegger. Still limped in and got second and decided let's not do that. Strong second. And then, A former teammate who was still doing government work in Germany said, hey, I just visited Normandy. Like, oh, I haven't been to normally. Let's go. And so you start hearing that they have reenactments and they have events you can go to. So you start hitting the network.

And they're like, yeah, you know, they have airborne jumps in there. We're like, oh, can we get tickets to go see it? They're like, I don't know. Who are you guys again? And we told them who we were. He goes, would you guys like to jump into it? Yeah, yeah. So went back, got airborne, round canopy certified, Coco on his jump, broke both of his ankles.

Oh, dang. And how? Does it hit hard, landed hard? He landed on the runway. You know, there's little lights that come up a few feet. You're trying to like lift your leg a little bit. It was pathetic. And so we jumped in.

My son jumped with me. And a week later, he went to Afghanistan. stand for a year. Hell. So it turned into this, you know, our kids. In the Army?

Yeah. He was in the 82nd. Awesome. So this year was the 80th anniversary. So we had 10 congressmen, Senator Crenshaw jumped, right? Isaac, Mike Waltz. Yeah.

You know, we created this every year. We're going to go back to Normandy because, you know, how do you pass the baton from one generation to the next through the eyes of your grandkids? So they need to see, you know, you on the battlefield. You know, sharing something that, you know, shouldn't be in a BFW hall or over a drink, you know, we thought it was important for the kids. The Saipan issue, I have a very good friend, Mark, who's head of Task Force Dagger Foundation, started doing recovery missions. So you can go into Vietnam.

You can dive again. You can, you know, we're the only country that puts resources against recovering lost. And so we went back to Special Forces scuba school. Old guy Red Bull, right? Dove got certified, went to archaeological dive school, learned how to put the brackets down, and the vacuum, do everything. And then we went to Saipan and spent three weeks

on a couple downed Hellcat sites to recover what you can. Very cool. So you got the distillery come and what else? Anything else? What's the next big project? America, 250th anniversary. So I had the honor of speaking at the R&C talking about, yeah, I saw that.

You know, passing once again the baton, you know, let's always question ourselves, are we doing the right thing when it came to the withdrawal of Afghanistan? And how do we make small town America important on the 250th? So right now the entire country's planning for Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, D.C. So when I talk to my friends in the administration, I'm like, where is the conversation about small town America, a parade with jeeps, you know, the Boy Scouts with flags? So I've been weasling my way because President Trump started a commission on a 250th anniversary. And I've been Don Keote yelling that it's not a celebratory. All of America talks about what it means to have a Fourth of July parade in small town America.

Freaking outstanding. So that's where I'm putting some of my energy into. Right on. Awesome, man. Sounds like that gets us up to speed. So people can find you. So you guys are on the interwebs. Yep.

Horse Soldier Bourbon.com. Yep. You got Instagram horse soldier bourbon. Twitter X is Horse Soldier U.S. say you got YouTube and Facebook which is also both those are our horse soldier bourbon and then for you if I got this right it's your you're Scott Neal and you're at a.F which is American Freedom AF distillery and that that's on Instagram no mine is whiskey and war stories oh okay Instagram so it's at whiskey and war stories yeah got it we

suck it's not in our nature our kids yell at us all the time because you know We let them post and do things. We probably need to get better at broadcasting. Like I say, I come from the, you know, don't talk about fight club story. So we get into these discussions. And we need to come out. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's good too.

You know, that's one of the things about this podcast is, you know, I've had guys on a decent number of guys that have come on and talk their story, whether it was World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. And they died afterwards. And, you know, I've had the families been so moved and so thankful. Because, you know, these are guys, Vietnam guys or World War II or Korean guys that, you know, they didn't, you know, they're sure, maybe they talked about it with their friends when they were in the bar or whatever, but they weren't telling their kids. Yeah. You know, I even, I even look like my youngest daughter is 15 years old. She, I retired in 2010, right? She doesn't, she doesn't remember me as a, as a military guy, you know, she doesn't,

know anything about she doesn't remember me going on deployment none of that she didn't she doesn't she doesn't it just doesn't exist for her so like it's not like i and like i sit around the dinner and table and say let me tell you about this one time in bagdad you know i don't do that like they're not going to hear that for me um and that's the same way it was for a lot of these these older guys that i've had on that have told their story and they're man their kids and their grandkids are just so happy that we're able to capture it. And on top of that, you know, military, I mean, all the younger generation of military guys, like, they're going to take lessons learned from even just from what you talked about today, just the simple lessons learned of, hey,

you know, maybe when this person who might not see combat for 10 years or 12 years or 15 years inside the Army or the Marine Corps, here's you talking about, oh my gosh, you know, I went to my first target assault and there was a kid in there and we didn't know what to do. Yep. How do you pass on legacy, right? And we grew up 30,000 years ago by the fire, you know, painting on the cave. And I think we've gotten a little bit out of small community, small family conversations, you know, about what made you. So now as I research my grandpa, my great, great, great uncle in the Alamo, all these things, you wish you could have a conversation or hear them.

So that's why some of these adventures are always family adventures. So as we get together and talk as uncles, you know what I mean? The kids get to hear. And now we've got grandkids. And, you know, you have to share. At the end, too, though, I don't want to give my kids a foot locker full of dirty boots and war medals and then try to recreate who I was. So trying to be present now as a dad and granddad. You've got to give priority to.

Yeah, no doubt about it. Awesome. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Yeah, I have a few questions. Oh, we got the bourbon expert over here. So,

okay, so just for clarification, I used to work in the bar industry, so I know a little bit. But so first question is from... Did you just roll out the fact that you were a bouncer as your qualification to go down the client.

I was a bartender and bar back, by the way. Okay. Blame my last. I stand corrected. And manager in training. And that counts too. So I know about invoices and inventory. Get ready.

Go ahead. So whiskey, right? It's all whiskey. Scotch, bourbon. It's all whiskey. So whiskey is a category is like saying special operations, right? So whiskey, you have vodka, you have rum as a category. Gin as a category.

Whiskey, too, by the way. Tequila, right? Wait, wait. Whiskey is above vodka, tequila aside. Okay, got it. Parallel. So it's a category, right? And then there's subsets underneath that like to.

Kila, there's Najo and there's in whiskey. There's scotch, which comes from Scotland. Can't come from Ireland, but it can be single malt, right? You have Irish whiskey, which can be multi-grained or a single-malted barley. Japanese whiskey, which comes from Japan, but it can be a multi-grain or a single malt. American whiskey is usually in two categories. One is bourbon and one is straight whiskey. Jack Daniels is a whiskey.

It's not a bourbon. Why? Because bourbon, as enacted by conceded by coffee. Congress in 1964 is a distinct product of the United States of America. Boom. So it has criteria that make it, if you don't follow those, you can't call it a bourbon. Isn't it because it's made in Bourbon County? 0.0.0.

No. Is it a product of the United States of America. Kentucky, 95% of the bourbons there and they like to be known for it. But by the law, it can be made in all 50s. States. Okay. Right on. See?

Learn something new every day. Okay. So when you said, because you started this stuff straight up white belt from scratch. Yep. All in the field, essentially. Then you get, then you went to some classes and stuff like that. How long would you? But the classes that you weren't to, they were like kind of a tourist type thing.

Like, I'm a curious tourist. I want to spend two days at this factory. They're going to show me how to blah, blah, blah. Then we found another Marine who was actually in the Ramadi at same time as you, Travis Barnes. He has a distillery called Hotel Tango. One of our investors invested in that and said, why don't you go see Travis and Hotel Tango.

He's in Indianapolis. And he said, here we go. Right on. Get that sack. Turn that lever. You know what I mean? What'd you say? His name was?

Travis Barnes. Travis Barnes. I'll have to find Travis Barnes. Awesome. Great American. He taught us the same thing. He just started with a buddy and, you know, poof, there you go. But we're a little bigger now.

What's his called? What's his Berber called? Travis. See you right in my head. wait for it to drop here. Hotel Tango. Yeah. Hotel Tango. Hotel Tango.

Okay, cool, cool. But those touristy classes, I feel like those count as part of the education process. They take you into the theory on how to taste it. So if you look at a lot of these podcasts and YouTubers, they're just drinkers and consumers. They're watire about the essence of nutmeg and, you know, like a cooking show person. And then you go into Kentucky or somebody that makes it, they're missing fingers. You know what I mean? They're making the donuts.

So we got to get with some of the most well-known bourbon personalities, but it's never the personality making it. It's the guy that shows up at 6.30 in the morning. It's the warehouseman that's been there for 30 years and can tell you about, you know, seventh floor versus fourth floor about how ethanol bleeds and lowers and hovers. That's who we spent time with,

down in the bowels of the ship. So a warehouse guy in the bourbon world is actually dealing with the product and the manufacturing. So you make it, right? So let's start here. It took 80 years to grow that tree, right? It took seven months to grow the grains, the corn, the barley, the winter wheat, or the rye. Then you truck it into one location.

You blend it all together. You heat it up to a certain level, and that's called a mash. And then you put it into a fermenter. and after 96 hours it turns into probably 8% alcohol. Now the snipers are going to listen to this and, you know, try to cut me with precision, but for general's sake. If I stop there, it's beer. Okay. When I go to put it back into a copper still and I start to boil it, alcohol boils at 177 degrees, whereas water boils above that.

So the vapors start to come up and when it touches copper, it falls back down. So it starts releasing some fatty ester. and other stuff. So it gets lighter and lighter and lighter. And as it transfers over, you introduce cold water on the other side that turns that vapor into a liquid and it comes out clear and it's called moonshine. And that's pure alcohol? To be a whiskey, you can't proof it higher than 160 whereas vodka is 192 because you still

subatomically, chemically you have esters and oils that give it the mouth fill and the taste of a whiskey. So you want to capture it at a certain proof. Then it's clear. Now, here's where Mother Nature and Father Time, when you put it in a brand new American White Oak barrel that's been charred. So it's burned on the inside. You have carbon. You have the release of vanillans, tannins, everything else. Time. It has to sit in the barrel. And it starts to change as pressures, environmental pressures, day in, day out, bring it in and out of the fibers of the poorest American white oak. It's starts to pick up vanillains and flavors and it releases the hard, harsh things that make you go blind.

And it changes into something sippable. So you can't microwave bourbon. It has to age. So even you say the things that make you go blind, that's not like an expression. Like at a certain point, if you drink the wrong alcohol, you'll go blind.

So when you have a new young batch, you know, they put it in a glen-caron glass and you look at the color. you kind of get a nose and you start to smell and then you put it up to your eyeball and you can tell if it burns or not right because it affects your ocular nerve so when you say going blind

it's because they didn't cut the right heads and tails the way you just don't take it all as it comes out the first set that starts flowing out has all the bad stuff and people that are nefarious they capture it all and sell it to a consumer and that's why people are dying over

in Mexico and everywhere because one-fourth of your product is trash. Or you throw back in called Sour Mash. Yeah, that's so like, I know this because I looked into distilling, right? Not brewing, distilling my own vodka. And not, hey, look, was it going to do it? Maybe, maybe not. This is back in the day.

So I looked into the process. And in the through that, the beginning of the learning process. This is back in the day. You were great cover here. Yeah. I learned that. Yeah. So it's kind of like, hey, if you don't, basically what I took from that is, hey,

if you don't know what you're doing, You can blind yourself in real life. And other people. Yes. Yeah. So the harshness of the art of distillation is knowing how much of the heads, how much of the tails, because that's the dirty sock is the tails. The heads are some of the boldness.

And then a sweet spot called the hearts. And then you put it in a barrel. You proof it down from 160 down to maybe 125. And or 120, depending where you want to be. and you just put it away. It just sits there. Now here's the bad part. It evaporates.

First year, 10% evaporates Zores in a barrel, 4%. So I'm racing Mother Nature right before it's gone in the barrel. So eventually it's gone. It's gone. Angel share. Does that contribute to the price in that way? So Pappy at 22 years old because maybe you've got, you know, out of 53, maybe 5, 7, 8, 10. gallons left.

When you say 80 years to grow the tree, that's for the wood for the barrels. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. The whole process. So there's no additives. Whereas regular like scotch, you can add caramel coloring to make it brownerer because it sits in these caves and it sits in Scotland where it's a very mild climate and they're already used bourbon barrels.

They're kind of burned out. So it'll come out not as amber as the consumer in spec. So they're allowed to put a certain amount of caramel coloring, just like, uh, rum your age rum is an aged there's some laws that say i can put you know so much of a 30 year old and the rest is one year old so a new barrel is going to give more flavor yeah that's what bourbon is that's the distinction so there's not a lot of oak trees in Scotland and Ireland and it's pretty much a one time use that's it by law I can only use it once so the secondary bourbon market soon as I pour it I sell it on a secondary market so either becomes a tequila.

barrel or a wine barrel or a scotch barrel. So how long would you say? Or a grill or whatever you said you made stuff? Yeah, yeah. Wood fire grill, chips. Hey, I use every input, right? You talk about sustainable? Give me that.

We're on. Sell that. It's kind of legit. So, okay, so this is Bourbon. How long would you say from knowing zero to the point where you can function in a business? business that you would consider successful? How long? Two to three years.

What most people do, like celebrity brands, they hire somebody that's kind of been in the biz and they become the face so they can get consumers to start buying it. So you can buy existing bourbon, put it into your label with a low investment, and they'll throw it into the market. And if it catches, they're already looking for a buyer, right, to exit. So if you look at the acquisition side, it's typically a threshold of a market. about 75,000 cases. If you can get your marketing and get into bars and get things going,

typically a public will buy it, right? And then you've made multiples, 10 X's, 12 X's in this industry. So deep, it's obvious that, or it seems obvious from this position, that you know more about bourbon than say the vodka, tequila scenarios, gin. I know it all. Why? because fundamentally the process is the same, right? And then you get to the marketing side.

So not only do I have a brand, I'm in charge of going to the consumer facing. So I have to do the events all around the country. I have to work with distributors. I have to work pricing, incentives, bonuses, all of these other things. As my competitor set on the bar, so if you look at a bar, right, I'm competing against not only my set, but the mind sheer of that bartender to pour, you know what I mean, more old fashions than, you know,

Red Bull and Vodka. So I have to be able to articulate why my product is better. Is bourbon your favorite drink out of everything? Like if you're going to hang out. Yeah, okay. No, I love tequila. No, right? There you go.

There's one thing I want to start. It's my personal quest, Don Quote Quest after the 250th is that to make a shot of bourbon and a beer cool again. like you saw in every old Western. Because right now, when I go to eat Mexican, what do I get? I get a beer and a shartreya. I don't even think about it. For my brand, if I could just bring back,

because the number one selling whiskey in the world is what? Whiskey, I don't know, Jack Daniels? Fireball. Fireball? It's consumed, going out of style, go to any bachelorette party, and there's a bucket of fireball. Interesting.

I don't think I've ever had fireball. Good, don't. You ever had fireball? Yeah, I have. Yeah. It's like, it's like, you know, the little fireballs that you have when your little kid. Yeah, that's like that. Yeah.

Like, what was the other, the mint one? Rumpelman. Rumpelman. Is that, okay. All right. Well, it's about consuming, right? So drinks, there's about one and a half pores per drink. So if you look at the, you know, there are 10 top cocktails that every restaurant has on the menu.

So it's a martini or it's a gin, fizz, or it's a old-fashioned or it's a, you know, The Manhattan bourbon has two categories. So we're always trying to bump off somebody else to a bartender. Oh, yeah, yeah. Hard part is I'm 57. I don't relate to 24-year-olds. They don't care about the military or we were heroes of 9-11. They want to know what's the price point or my customer is going to ask for it.

So we have to have a different kind of business conversation. All of that we knew nothing about. It's only because we just started talking. Yeah, that's crazy. You read a Long Island iced tea. Love them. I kind of love them too. What goes in that?

Right everything. Oh really? It's basically everything with sweet and sour and some coke on the top. Like a soda fountain when you just hit every one of those. But you know, America is still social, right? And we have some challenges in our industry. You have, you know, access to CBDs and things. that are the younger culture,

that's how they socialize differently. Wine has really gone down. The Americans, you know, not to many people are doing red wine and steaks. So we evolve. Yeah. Is alcohol consumption going down? Yeah.

It certainly seems like to me. And I, beer. Yeah. Even, I know that there's non-alcoholic beer now that's really, really popular. And also,

even in the culture of the military, which when I was a young, seal it was ridiculous it was our number of cells are still the military in the next com and aphi's channels but um there is a more consciousness for um you know quality and fitness and everything right so we have to evolve into that conversation next is people aren't that social anymore go out like they used to per se and you know out every night all night and now it's in

now it's social media and now I'm you know I'm interacting different now it's secret Hitler do you know what secret Hitler is no

it's a game it's a board game and it's I've played it a few times and it's really fun and like I know people that like are 20 22 24 years old

and they go play secret Hitler wait in it's an in person board game it's an in person board game okay and it's it's kind of cool you've got to kind of lie to each other is it like clue or it's way better than clue to be honest with you you basically you're trying one person is hitler like you get a card yeah one person is hitler and then other people are either fascist or liberal and you get card that says you're a liberal you're a liberal and you got to get certain loss passes a little bit it's not it's not actually that complicated like you can you'll learn to play it immediately yeah but then what the thing is the secret hitler he if he's the last

man standing you know then the fascist win he wins and that team wins and if he's or the liberals can stop him by figuring out who it is and you can accuse him like you're hitler and then he can go no i'm not and you there's some way of proving it but that's like a legitimate thing i wouldn't have when i was 22 years old, I wouldn't have thought in one billion years of playing a board game with my friends. You're now in the bridge category. Yeah. What do you mean? They're all coming over here to play.

Yeah. And now these kids are like doing this. And it's kind of, it's interesting. It's a new world. A little bit more focus. Like you said, a little bit more focus on health and fitness. So good, good in that respect. It's what we chosen.

So this is our path. This will create generational wealth for our family. So this is the legacy we have to focus on. And it will be successful. If we wanted to exit today, we could exit. And then what is the next question? But so this is our battlefield. We've shaped it.

We're owning it. Mother nature continues to attack us from left and right. COVID hit. Then the price of materials hit. You know, I've got competitors that are buying my bottling lines. so I can't bottle. I mean, it's, it's, it is the game of the business world. And I love every fascinating second, you know, but I don't have the deploy troops button,

secret mission nighttime. You know, there you go. And then one day, I hope I have a third chapter. So what's the third thing in your life? Do you give it back, you know, do you, you know, write your memoirs? What's the third phase? And I got to talk to President Bush. you know, after he left the presidency, what do you do when you're on top of the world?

And every day the decisions on you and knowledge is on you. And he took up painting like Churchill did. And, you know, he's focused on veterans and Africa and other things. So I think, you know, I'm anticipating what the next, the beginning of the rest of your life looks like. There we go. Right on. Any other closing thoughts? That might have been it right there.

America. America. Awesome, man. Well, day. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for sharing your experiences, the lessons learned along the way. Obviously, thanks for your service to the country. To special operations.

And thanks for what you're doing now to build a business and put people into work, man. Thank you for giving me a voice today. And there's more to come. Right on. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, Scott Neal has left the building.

Great conversation. Great stuff he's got going on. That being said, look, we can't always be drinking bourbon. It's true. We're going to need other fuel in the system. Yes. So if you're looking for some other fuel, some clean fuel, I recommend Jock Fuel. So check it out.

We got everything that you need, jacofuel.com. We got energy. We got hydrate. We got protein. We got protein shakes. We got protein powder. We got joint warfare. We got time war.

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Is there a Walmart near you there is a two walmarts near me? Yeah check. Yeah, so anyone can go to Walmart There's something like a Walmart 90% of the population in America lives 10 miles or less from a Walmart. Yeah. So you can go there and get some charcoal fuel. Also we got it at Wawa, vitamin shop, GNC, military commissaries, Afees, Hanifords, dash stores in Maryland, Wakefern, ShopRite, H.E.B. down in Texas. Meyer up in the Midwest, Wegman's Harris Teeter, Publix, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere. we got the crew

we got the team Jackson, Jared and Chaz they're just out there on the road Jackson goes hard Yeah Yep They're delivering And if they don't deliver

Well email JF Sales at joccofuel.com And they will deliver They'll show up Make it happen So that's what we're doing Joccofuel.com Go check it out

Is there is true There's some new go flavors With energy drink Because I was I was going over some labels that were sent to me for various artistic projects. And there were some new flavors in those labels.

I believe we have some new flavors coming, a new flavor on its way. We're not talking about it now at this time. It's not out yet. Okay. All right. So that's that. So check it out, joccofield.com. I just had a go and a half.

I'll probably finish this one on the way home. And I had a hydrate. Yep. Because I was dehydrated. I understand. From lifting. Oh, damn. Okay, I understand.

I had a moke, you know, avoiding catabolic breakdown from. We don't want that. Let's do. All right. Also check out at originusa.com. You need clothes. We're talking about American companies today, American made companies. OriginUSA.com.

What we got is we got jeans, boots, hats, beanieys, belts, wallets, hunt gear, rain jacket, wind jacket, wind jacket, hoodies, multiple variations, pants, multiple variations. We just got everything that you need. And it's all made 100% in America. So that's what we're doing over here. We are making things 100% in American from American-made supplies.

This isn't some free material that we bought from a slave-driven environment overseas. It's from America. All the materials are from America. And it's made right here in America. Go to origin, USA.com. and check out America. That's what I got.

It's true. Also, Jocco Star called Jocco Store. This Discipline equals freedom stuff on there. Some shirts, some hoodies on there as well, some hats and stuff. This year, what is it? It's winter still right now? Yes. Spring.

It's winter. Winter spring next month. I don't know. Okay. Well, coming out with some new stuff, a lot of new stuff. Varying levels of excitement. Either way. You want to be informed on this.

stuff that's coming in go to jocco store.com and put your little email in the in the what you call the email list so keep you inform i don't spam people with that we don't spam people with that but anyway you can stay informed the new stuff comes boom you got first first dibs on that one um but yeah some cool stuff on there also on jocco store dot com is what we call the shirt locker it's a new design t-shirt subscription scenario every month i have a friend good friend by the name of Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave. Good deal, Dave.

And he was like, hey, you know, I've been a member of the shirtlock for a long time, you know, and my shirts are kind of piling up. And he was almost indicating that, you know, he might put it on pause or something like this. I'm like, hey, bro, do what you dig. You know, the shirt locker is here for you. You see what I'm saying? Two days later, he sends me a text. He says, just when I thought I was out, you dragged me back in. That's it.

That's all he sent. So I'm like, huh? Okay. essay how so because I forgot about any other you know correspondence you know plus I was lifting at the time so you know I'm thinking about other stuff and he sends me a picture of this month's design is it fire it's fire what is that the the no drinking axe it's like the doc dosaki's like rip or whatever that's right anyway he just sends the picture of that yeah and I was like he's like dude this is awesome so hey man like I said some cool designs they're a little bit different

and a little bit outside of the the what do you call coloring outside the a little bit outside the box or whatever but I think people seem to like them anyway joccolstore.com click on short locker you can kind of check them out you like something shoot also also check out Colorado craft beef.com and primal beef.com this is where you can get your steak your beef jerky your beef sticks your hot dogs your burgers all from American companies American families awesome people awesome companies awesome steaks go get some primobief.com and colorado craftbeef.com also subscribe to this podcast also check out jocco underground dot com that's where we answer your questions directly also check out we have a bunch of youtube channels we got psychological warfare we have flipside

canvas we got books and now i mentioned a book today we'll probably cover in the future it's swords of lightning by mark and bob who were out on these horse soldiers operations and then I've written a bunch of books about leadership and I've written a bunch of kids books kids books are being turned into a movie already been filmed by the way echo Charles is in it plays a very important role sure foundational foundational it provides excellence and legitimacy to the whole scene that's that's the word so that's what we're doing but you know you're gonna have to wait a while for the movie because it takes a while for these people who make to finish post production yeah that's real

But in the meantime, we wrote awesome books. And when I say we, I guess I mean me. So check it out. The Way the Warrior Kids series also check out Mikey and the Dragons. That's what we got going for you. Also, Eschlon Front. We have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership.

We take these lessons that we learn on the battlefield and we teach them to people who are in leadership positions, which, by the way, is everyone. So if you need help inside your organization, go to Eschlonfront.com. You can come to one of our live events or you can bring our company into your company to help with your leadership. We also have an online training academy because people around the world need to get better at leadership.

You are not born to lead. You're not born to lead. You have to learn how to lead. These are skills, skills that we can teach you. And skills that are applicable not only to, oh, I'm in a business or, oh, I'm running an organization, but also skills that are, applicable to everything that you do, every interaction you have with your kids, with your wife, with your husband, with your team, with your neighbors. Learn how to handle all those things. Go to extreme ownership.com. And if you want to help service members active and retired,

you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization takes care of so many of our veterans. if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. Micah Fink up there in the mountains of Montana. And then Jimmy May's organization, Beyond the Brotherhood.org.

Check all those out. And if you want to connect with Scott Neal once again, he's got horsesoldier bourbon.com on the Indrawebs. He's got the Instagram, horse soldier bourbon, TwitterX, at Horse Soldier USA. And then he's got the YouTube Facebook, are both at Horse Soldier Bourbon. And then he's got Scott Neal, which is Whiskey and War Stories. So check that one out on the gram. For us, you can check out jocco.com.

We're also on social media. I'm at Jocco Willink. Echoes that echo Charles. Just be careful because that thing will wreck your whole freaking morning. Morning, noon, or night? True. I heard a fact the other day they're saying that the average screen time is seven hours. Come on, people.

Don't do it. Don't do it. Get away from it. That's what we got. Once again, thanks to Scott Neal for coming on here. Thanks for your service. Thanks to your lessons learned about business and about life. Thanks to all our military personnel with a specific salute to our Green Beret brothers from special forces,

from the Saug guys in Vietnam to the mountains of Afghanistan. Thank you for taking the fight to the enemy, by with and through the host nation. So you guys do it better than anyone. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all of the first responders. Thank you all for fighting crime here at home and for keeping us safe. And everyone else out there, just because one game is over doesn't mean you can't get in another game.

Look at Scott and the rest of his crew. All of them had earned a nice, comfy retirement, 25 years in the military, multiple wars. They could have gone to the sidelines, game over. But they didn't. found a new game, a new mission, and they executed. And you can do the same. At any time, in any phase of life, you can get in the game. But that's up to you.

And I recommend in order to do that, you go get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.